csif on pause

less a goodbye, more a see you later

if you’re a 90s kid and aren’t terribly allergic to anime, the above image should be familiar. it’s a place where you go to get to the next level. and when you come out of it, you’re in the company of friends waiting for you to return. this is where i’m headed into for the next few months.

writing is undoubtedly one of my most beloved creative outlets. it’s allowed me to imagine new realities. to think ahead, and to reflect on the past. it’s a medium that allows me to share what i love with close friends and stranger alike.

publishing one’s writing on the internet yields a high upside on the internet. getting your thoughts down on (digital) paper, consistently, is a great way to connect with interesting people who are on the same wavelength.

but it’s not serving my needs.

in a year in a half, i think i’ve accomplished quite a bit in a short time for what it’s worth. i wanted a year’s worth of writing consistently, figuring out how to develop a newsletter format, and going full send on it. 3dX2y (this newsletter) and CSIF (this series) have taken along many forms on this journey. it’s changed shapes perhaps more times than i can count, and more times than you may be able to perceive.

it’s served as a great way to stay connected with old friends who aren’t on social media as much. it’s allowed me to actively curate my tastes, and reflect on why i like what i like. it’s also provided me several benchmarks of where my headspace is and has been at through the year and a half.

but the greatest gift of all is that it helped me discover my voice. i’m a child of the internet. and much like my peers, i’ve consumed far more content than i’ve known what to do with. i’ve mimicked the voices of my peers and of my heroes. i’ve tried writing long posts and short posts. through it all, i learned to speak like me. not what i think i should sound like or what people like for me to sound like. i speak like me.

we often go through life mimetically. it doesn’t help that with the advent of creator-follower culture that allows you to “measure” success. this culture allows for writers to compare each other and each other’s works in a way that’s akin to comparing apples to oranges. if you don’t get what i mean, scroll through youtube for a moment. look at the similarity of thumbnails, of the tone of voice. albeit a different platform, this phenomena is platform agnostic.

but writing is, as naive as it sounds, i believe to be a pure medium. you can try to copy someone’s voice or format. but your voice has got to cut through. people can tell when you’re faking the funk, they just know it. we’ve been around the internet for too long to not be able to cut through the bullshit at this point. you can try to sound like Mohammed Al-Kurd, Hobart, Kaarlson, Nix, Isabel, Kasra, and many more. but shit don’t matter if you don’t sound like you. the medium has and will expose the greatest of emperors. for as long as it has existed, a person’s writing reveals a lot more than any author has control over.

it’s a scary thing. but it’s also exhilarating. locking in to write a new essay or collecting a myriad of things i’ve come across that i enjoy seeing on the internet often made my weak. it made me excited to share my thoughts, feelings, and obsessions. i’m quite grateful for my friends’ encouragement. my favorite moments include friends reaching out to relate to me about ADHD, how a particular prose affected them, or just a random stranger subscribing because i talked about some ultra-niche thing.

i absorb a lot of content so i know exactly what i LOATHE as a consumer. i hate when writers half-ass shit for a TV show. you can immediately tell. i hate when a season for a show closes, and then you find out it’s never getting renewed. so much potential and love lost. so for the few people that read this, i didn’t want to just, for lack of better phrasing, ghost ya’ll. even if you don’t read that often. because you taking the time to read anything i write at all, even if it’s just a header, means a fuck ton lot more than you think.

i’m taking a break for a while to get certain parts of my house in order. i want to be in a place again where i can take on this creative endeavor more freely without thinking about the opportunity cost. i want to come back less scared of publishing my longer works that i often abandon from a lack of interest but really it’s procrastination. i want to come back in the headspace that’ll allow for me to be a better writer. i saw somewhere in passing that: “locking in is a beautiful thing” and cliche aside, yeah i’d agree.

see ya’ll when i get back

Sincerely,

Haroon