LEVEL UP — You’re 24 Years old, Birthday Boy . . .
By: Anchor T Lund
Tags: Artist, Growing Up, Writer, Summary, Life Lessons

Q: How are you doing? Both emotionally and physically.

A: I’m doing alright enough. I can’t complain too much given the circumstances of everything going on in the world.

On an emotional scale, I’ve been using my time this year to focus on self-care and working through negative thoughts, doubts, and anxieties, and have been trying to build up my self-confidence and sense of worth. It has had its rough patches, but I’ve been tackling issues as they come, and I’ve been allowing myself grace when I start to beat myself up for not being where I want to be. Overall though, I think I’m doing good.

On a physical scale, I could probably be better, but I’m hanging in all the same. I started a new medication a tiny bit before the pandemic started, and it’s been helping with my heart issues a lot more, so that’s been nice! However, my knee hasn’t been doing too well. I tweaked it recently, and since then, it’s not been too stable, so I’m back to using a knee brace to keep it from falling out while I walk and do stuff, so that’s a bummer.

But again, I’m overall doing alright enough.

Q: Have you been able to accomplish any of your goals or dreams this year?

A: Short answer — not really?

Long answer — it’s complicated. Despite what I said up above, 2020 has given me a couple of curveballs I didn’t expect to come my way.

When I started 2020, my big goal was to start getting back into writing my story that I tentatively call “Birth,” which has progressively grown and grown in scale as I continue to think and build things for its world in my mind. I still desire to write that story to completion, but it’s just been the case that, this year, my drive to write has been low as all of hell itself. And it’s kind of funny really because I used to be the sort of person who’d preach about how “Writer-Block isn’t a thing,” and a part of me still believes that is the case.

However, the challenge I’ve been facing with the world I’ve built, I believe, has been a matter of mindset. By that, I mean that the original draft that I wrote was written for and by a kid who was in a darker state of mind— I was someone who wanted to hope but ultimately felt hopeless, and that reflected a lot in the fictional world I built.

This is why I say it’s complicated because as I mentioned in the previous questions’ answer, I’ve been emphasizing self-care, and I believe that by working out my emotions, I’ll eventually be able to get back into the saddle of writing once more.

In regards to other goals and dreams, I believe that’s the funny thing about 2020 and my unexpected journey into emphasizing self-care because I’ve given myself the chance to explore new possibilities this year that in the past, I might not have allowed. So I’ve experimented. I’ve poked at making miniature video games, at making animations, at different artistic mediums, at live streaming myself and some of my friends when we play games, at podcasting, at making music, and overall, I’ve just been flexing my creative muscles on different things to figure out what I enjoy, what I can do, and what I actually want to do.

So in that sense, it could be argued that perhaps I did accomplish some goal? Just not my initial goals. Things just evolved organically, and I believe that’s alright. I’m happy with where I’m at and what I’m trying to do at the moment at least.

Q: So what are some of the new goals you have for the next year?

A: I don’t know if I want to say. I think part of what used to always cause me to “crash and burn” with any of my previous goals is that I always hyped them up to be something big, before even starting them. And while I think it’s great to be excited about ideas and projects, I think it’s also healthier in the long run that I keep some of these things private, so I don’t have to live up to all the pressure I put on myself by pitching it to literally everyone I know as something I’m going to do.

Pressure is great and all, but too much can also strangle out the fun of any personal project, you know? So I’m keeping things lowkey for the next year, and I’m just going to come into the year with the mentality that I’m just going to try my best to do my best, and that will hopefully be good enough.

Q: Okay, then how would you feel about sharing some of the last year’s projects with us here?

A: Sure! I’d love to go through a list of things I’ve actually done this year! I’ll approach this next piece as it’s own section, which I’ll break up into different categories.