For as long as I’ve been actively creative, I’ve always had an evening project. Sure, there were breaks between such projects, but they were never long. I can’t help it, I feel like I need something to work on. If I don’t, I feel bad.

Now, that could be an issue. I do have a tendency to overextend myself. I do too much, sometimes probably to the detriment of my physical health. But this concept of an evening project has also allowed me to do so much already.

Humble Beginnings

I started seriously getting into creative writing when I was about in sixth grade, so around eleven to twelve years old. I had a little white folder and a fountain pen with me, and I would write my first novel whenever I could. Between classes, on weekends, at the restaurant while waiting for my food—and of course in the evenings before going to sleep.

I had many reasons for writing that novel, but at this point I’m not quite sure if I had them from the beginning, or retroactively decided on them. It took me about a year of working on it, but by the end, I had a full, finished manuscript.

I call it a novel, because at that age I didn’t have a concept of editing yet. I thought if you wrote something down, that’s what it was. Over the years, I made many attempts of transcribing those fragile white pages scribbled with fountain pen ink into electronic documents. I distinctly remember my greatest fear during flights being that we might crash into the ocean and the water would wash away all my words.

It’s cute in what simple ways a child’s mind can work. To this day, I believe there’s a certain magic in writing something by hand that just can’t be replicated by typing words on a keyboard. The latter is much more practical now that we live in a world of smartphones, of course, but nothing beats that scratch of a pen on a piece of paper.

Establishing a Habit

As I grew older, my habit of writing daily solidified. I would go on to finish six novels over the course of the next decade, and building my first publicly released app in the process, Qami.

Despite the rhythm, my creative writing waned, eventually. It’s not really that I lost interest, but despite plenty of encouragement, I ended up struggling to find a purpose in my writing. There weren’t that many people who read it. I put it online, for a while. I even started recording myself reading the pieces and putting that on YouTube, all in the hopes of making it more approachable for people.

In my university days, I joined Untold Stories and helped build it into a flourishing community which would end up publishing five anthologies containing various pieces, including some of mine. But I found myself unable to answer the question of why I wrote at some point. So I stopped. Not completely, of course, I have a whole (virtual by now) drawer of unfinished pieces lying around, which keeps getting fuller and fuller—and this very blog is proof that I probably won’t ever completely stop.

But I stopped writing daily.

Metamorphosis

That didn’t mean I stopped my evening projects, however. Despite my life only getting busier as I transitioned from being a student to entering the workforce, from being a loner to having a somewhat healthy social life and a wonderful partner, I couldn’t keep my hands still.

I physically and mentally feel bad if I spend too long without a project. I can’t just sit on the couch and consume all night long, even though sometimes it would probably be better to just wind down after a hard day’s work (and sometimes my body, or my friends and partner force me to, thankfully). So when my writing stopped, something else filled the gap. The habit didn’t end, it just changed.

I started writing apps. And when I wasn’t doing that, I picked up freelance work. I started teaching, redid my course materials. Again. Built an app to help me teach. Decided to put all my teaching into article form.

I’m still in that last phase, currently. My brain is growing bored by it, but now that I’ve started the process, I will have to finish it. Four down, four lessons to go. But brains are funny, and impatient.

After I’m done with the lessons, I want to finally finish overhauling my portfolio. And finish programming Magistan. And keep working on Qami, Mattrbld and Quadrants. And maybe, perhaps, eventually finish writing a novel again.

Gentle Restlessness

It sounds like a lot, because it is. Sometimes, it overwhelms me. There’s a physical limit to how many side projects a single person can have, right? If I look at others, that doesn’t seem to be the cause. They always seem more productive (and successful) than me.

But my time is the single most valuable resource I own, and I’d much rather spend it creating something than consuming mindless stuff, although there’s room for that in my life as well. Sometimes, I doubt—especially when I start asking myself why I’m even bothering to make all that stuff when nobody seems to care about it (it’s not true, some of you prove me wrong all the time, and it warms my heart!).

Sometimes, I wonder how I’ve even managed to make this much so far. But it’s in moments like this one, after a busy day spent with family and very little creative work, that I realise I can achieve anything, as long as I keep working on it, one evening at a time.