Should I get back into writing?

You might not know this about me, but... I have this thing.

When I'm alone in my room or alone in my thoughts, or both, sometimes I like to imagine that I'm an anime protagonist in a shounen fantasy, off on an epic, high stakes adventure to save the planet. Except it's very gay. And that's basically the crux of every novel idea I've ever had.

I have a whole backlog of ideas and concepts and scenes that I've written out on note paper, on my laptop, and sometimes on scraps of receipts from meals I clearly couldn't afford at the time, but purchased anyways in order to be with my peers. However, it's been an incredibly long time since I've had one of my writing spasms - you know - those moments when you completely lose yourself in a creative endeavour. When you're in the zone.

Ever since my Youtube channel kinda-sorta-maybe blew up, I've been riding the wave, putting a lot more effort into content creation just... to see where it leads. And now, it's already been a whole year since I last flexed my creative writing muscle. I miss it... but, at the same time... I feel something gnawing at me.

Shame.

When I first moved to Vietnam, my original purpose was to really try to make it as a writer. I wrote... a lot. An obscene amount. In the first 2 years, I wrote 3 novels. It was garbage, and the one that I thought was my best (the one I ended up publishing) didn't even have 1 organic customer. Man, did that failure sting, because I felt like I was stuck. Stagnant. I crossed an ocean and burned bridges in order to pursue my "passion", and what did I have to show for it? I liked writing fantasies... and somehow convinced myself that I was living in one - one where my 1st novel would become a bestseller.

These thoughts were the echoes of last year.

While the shame of failure I felt during those days have mostly subsided, I could still feel its faint fingertips hovering over the hair on my skin as my longing to get back into writing grew.

I don't want to feel this way about writing. I used to love writing. I know I should not let past failures affect my tomorrow (it's all a part of the learning process after all), but easier said than done I suppose.

Perhaps... I'll start with something easy. I'll get back into it like a toddler dipping their pinky toe into a kiddie pool for the first time.

Yeah. That sounds good.