I can’t stand my lack of output. I have been frustrated with it for a while, but creativity, while inherent, is also a muscle: if you don’t train it, it goes away. At first, my lack of production was just laziness, the traditional killer. Then, as time passed, it became more and more difficult to start again: first, it was the ominous feeling that comes with ‘it’s been so long’ was the one keeping me frozen in place – then, slowly but surely, creative paralysis crept in and ‘it’s been so long’ became ‘I don’t know how anymore’.
I have always been careful about sharing my creative expressions with others, because they are personal and thus vulnerable to me. Still, every once in a while, someone who did know about my blog and channel would ask how it was going, and if i’d stopped writing and filming. I would just shrug, saying I didn’t have the time, or that I was taking a deliberate break. And some days, I was. But those some days being all days was definitely not voluntary: it stemmed from an uncertainty on how to progress.
Then today (just now, actually), I plugged in my external hard-drive. My hard-drive, filled with memories of the past few years, the years that shaped me more than anything. (Okay, I can see that that’s probably not technically true, but as far as conscious growing goes, I did a lot of it from the moment I left high school.) Anyhow, I opened the harddrive, and I saw what I had been missing, and why I was doing what I was doing before. I saw a radiant, happy, bright young girl, young woman, whatever one calls oneself when they look back two years in the past. Point is, it made me realize I don’t want to deprive myself of those reflections, and the ability to look back on them later on.
I also don’t want to limit my public expression. I care way too much about what others think of me, and I have also been stuck on wanting to know so much more before I put myself and my views out there, thinking I needed to have the answers in order to have any value to add. I don’t know much more now than I did before – but I have found that maybe not knowing, and just sharing the small stuff is good enough. People are allowed to make mistakes, it’s how we learn – and there is a reason we watch videos, even if it’s completely uneventful vlogs. We connect to the personality behind them, the character we see. And even if I know nothing (which, let’s face it, I do), that can be worth something. So I want to try (again).
As Instagram and Facebook keep graciously reminding me, it has now been exactly two years since my first big solo trip. At the time, I had my traditional trouble following through, which has left me with a lot of unused footage from the majority of my travels. I want to do something with that material. My plan is to edit what can or should be edited, and use this opportunity to try out some different things: maybe I will post some clips with some voice-over recollections, maybe I will just post a video the way it was originally intended… maybe I will do a response, like I did with my 16-to-18 video. You will have to wait and find out!
This whole time, my fingers have been flying over my keyboard. I’m ready. I hope you are.
Love, Ruby
p.s. Despite appearances, no reflective Rubys were harmed in the making of this post.
Ruby in the Sky 
Leave a comment