IAMT #13: From Here

by adib sin & cae

From Here (ft. Cae)

To review:

IAMT #9 was about the lasting despair that comes with losing friends, especially if it feels like you’re at fault

IAMT #10 was about finding appreciation for a friendship that has temporarily lost its luster

IAMT #11 was about the self-serving importance of friends to personal history

IAMT #12 is about the best parts of a well-maintained, long-lasting friendship (and how that dictated the direction of “Retro”, my video editing project for my high school friends)

Thanks for reading my brief series on friends. I’ll wrap up this year with what’s in store for me from here.

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Rewind seven years when I started living in a city after starting college; I would experience constant external influences, whether I wanted to or not. Interesting people from different walks of life and unique experiences I opened myself up to occupied my time outside of school. And well, outside of that, I was grinding away in game dev.

It’s an exhilarating feeling to be constantly inspired by the world around you, and being on my own at the time, I could channel any time and energy I had left to do whatever I found stimulating.

As I get older, I have fewer new experiences that shape my worldview. Between work, daily mundanity, and maintaining existing relationships, the inspiration comes far more seldom now. But to create and improve our own work, we must consume.

A few times a year, I’ll make a “wishlist” - a list of things I want to do when a certain deadline is over or time passes. I made one while making “Retro” since it felt like I was putting parts of my life on hold to finish it. It’s comprised of different types of media: games, movies, TV shows, books, etc. It also has smaller hobbies that I might’ve tucked away temporarily.

In the past, I would use my wishlist as an excuse to relax and reward myself after hitting a milestone, but lately I think it’s an imperative part of my creative cycle. For example, how will my writing ever improve if I’m mostly reading back my own journals? Even for personal growth, for example, how will I become funnier if I’m not exposed to unfamiliar comedy chops?

Especially as of late, I find myself falling into the trap of closing myself off from the world. But the world is vast and there’s always more to learn, more to experience. All of this to say, I’ll be spending the next few weeks to months soaking in ideas from new and familiar sources alike. I’ll be putting the pen down for a bit, in part to alleviate any expectation that I have of myself to produce anything.

So TL;DR, I’ll be hibernating for a bit.

So far, I’ve played a few games on my backlog(Wildfrost, Frostpunk) and am nearly done with the miniseries “Chernobyl”. I ugly cried after watching the short film “Look Back” and am catching up on all the TIME magazines that have been collecting dust on my desk. It’s all been spectacular so far.

If there’s anything you can confidently recommend, lmk and I’ll add it to the queue. As always, thanks for reading and happy holidays.

brb,

- chib