I still don't know what I want to use this blog-ish thing for. Longer versions of incomplete thoughts, maybe. I've made various blogs at various points and never really been happy with them. Apart from a Livejournal I had in the mid 2000s. That was enjoyable.
I think maybe my hesitance at what to use this for comes from the fact that short form essays aren't within my usual creative output. I tend to go for either microblogging nonfiction or longer fiction. Maybe I'll do some flash fiction on here at some point. Maybe.
But the point is that this isn't a form in which I am practiced. Which means that the only way to get good at it is to be bad at it for a while.
And that is both the joy and the point of creativity.
Let me give an example. Five years ago I had never played a tabletop roleplaying game. I found them daunting. In the early days of the pandemic one of my friends started an online game and I joined. I was nervous, I was uncertain, I was bad, I got confident, I got better. Two years after that I ran a d&d game for the first time. I was terrified, I overplanned, I messed things up, I got better. I'm now two years into running a regular game. I still get nervous but I am so much better at running the game than I was, and I wouldn't be there without many sessions of panic and thinking on my feet and getting better. I'm currently considering writing a one page RPG based on a joke. It will be traumatic. I will get better at it.
One of the big problems with AI is actually a big problem with AI's biggest promoters. They see that it takes time and effort to learn how to do creative things. They see this as a problem to solve when it's part of the creative process, arguably one of the best parts. You make a thing. You do it better than you did before. You learn about yourself and your subject. You grow. I simply do not understand people who want to bypass one of the biggest points of creativity.
This was not a good essay. It doesn't even come to a definite conclusion.
I'll get better.
