When I first started my college career, my intention was to go into this learning about new ways of extending whatever artistic skills that I possessed, and possibly learn something new about myself that could help with that. I wanted to expand on how to draw people, and how to create things from my imagination. I wanted—and still want—to be able to tell a story that people can enjoy, no matter what form of media that comes in.
While I have been progressing in skills—and learning new ones while at it—I sort of lost the capability to create for myself; in turn, that meant that I lost the capability to create a story that I could be proud of. When I was in high school, and a lot younger, I would write to myself a lot. A lot of those writings have since been deleted, and anything that I produce currently only last about…maybe a paragraph or two, or if I’m lucky, they last multiple smaller paragraphs when inspiration hits for longer than just a few minutes. I have slowly been trying to get myself back in the groove of things, though I know that this is a long process that can’t be fixed overnight (though I wish that was the case for most things).
This all came to a burst during the middle of my spring quarter of 2024. My motivation was at an all time low, I felt like I wasn’t able to do anything to get through it, and I was struggling really bad at even starting things, let alone finishing the things I was in the middle of doing. I ended up conversing about my professor about this, asking to meet outside of class time to discuss and ask about what to do.
To put it in an embarrassing way, I was asking my professor for motivation to continue trying.
For a good half an hour, it was a back and forth between her asking me questions, and me answering them as I tried not to cry too much (I had broken down almost immediately at the beginning of the call. I also failed at trying to suppress my crying). It was almost cathartic, though I sometimes look back on it with a little bit of shame for breaking down on her like that.
It wasn’t until we got onto the topic of creating and what I enjoyed doing that she was able to come up with an idea to get me back on a creative streak.
As creatives in the work field, we rarely get the chance to create for ourselves, or to have a chance to create things in the way that we love (unless we are able to find a job that allows us to be selfish). In order to give me that leeway to continue doing work for class, as well as be able to be expressive and hone into this passion of mine for storytelling, I was given a side quest.
Why not tell the story of The Hero’s Journey? Create something that allows me to use my passion for storytelling to give people something to interact with in a way that inspires others to follow their own passion and dreams?
That conversation birthed the storybook: an engagement object that I created in Second Life. A thing that would hold the story that is found within the Hero’s Journey. Something that people can interact and read through as they go along.
This is definitely a project that will progress past this class, but it is definitely one that I will be excited to continue as I continue my college career.