T Minus 365.

The steam rose from the tea cup, telling a story before disappearing.

Eventually the tea will get cold and I will plug my nose and try to drink it in the fewest amount of gulps possible. No one likes cold tea.

And to reheat it would be to lose another story, the steam that which finds a path, stumbles along letters and words and worlds before disappearing, disappearing before I can grasp it.

But I will try. These are my aspirations for 2024:

1. To actually write.

Sometimes I surprise myself on the methods of procrastination I discover. Creating an account for Vocal felt like a step in the right direction. And it was. I stepped into the right direction, but then… there was no movement. No foreword no backword, just a limbo of blank pages.

I created an Instagram account to post my poems. Created the account, haven’t quite posted any of my poems though. I convinced myself I first needed to buy a typewriter. Yeah. A typewriter, I would write my poem on it unedited, edit it with a lazy stroke of my pen then post a picture of it all notched on the typewriter, aesthetically pleasing with maybe some ornaments here and there that’d correspond with the poem. Genius if, of course, it existed.

I haven’t gotten around to buying the typewriter; there were too many options and the fear of buying a defective one, or a great one but not living up to the image in my mind would’ve felt like a sign from the universe saying You don’t really need it. You will never need it.

What now?

An English professor once told me that writing is not this romantic idea of smoking cigars in front of a fire or walking (insert magical place here) and writing when inspiration hits and when it does you get it right on the first try. No. It’s labour. The actual writing part of writing is work on top of work. This is my first aspiration, to find time—no create time to work, post my shit, write some more, and maybe get noticed even if by one person.

2. To fail.

A statement that might explain some things about me: I am a first generation immigrant. My mom works in a factory building car parts, my dad at two different bakeries. Repeatedly I have been told that there is no room for failure. Either you make enough money and garner enough respect to be comfortable or you’re stuck labouring away at an intense job forever. But what about a future I am happy in. I have stories to tell but they seldom get written down in fear of failure. And no matter how many times I’m told in different adaptations of the same quote—failing just doesn’t fit into my schedule. This year—on Vocal—it will.

3. To be vulnerable.

I am a good writer. I know that. But sometimes…it falls flat. And I’ve recently discovered a quote by Robert Frost which goes like this:

“No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader. No surprise in the writer, no surprise in the reader.”

I am a very emotional person. I cried watching Shrek 3, I cried watching an Amazon Christmas commercial (the one where three old women go sledding) and I (don’t cry but) get this rush of emotion everytime I hear the song O Children by Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds because it was played during that one scene in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1.

I cry when I read good books. I don’t cry reading my own. This is my last aspiration; to understand who I am, dig deep into the mysterious, selfish, most vulnerable, most beautiful parts of myself and let them free to play and desicrate the, what once was, blank page.

Dear Future me, don’t let me down.