Someone Stole My Writing

On new year's day, January 1st, 2022 - Emma and I went for a hike in the great hills. It was a beautiful walk up and over smoothened stones, as we passed by, and along a healthy little stream of down-flowing water. It has been a hot summer already - Christmas day just one week earlier was over 40 degrees celsius, so I was surprised to see any water flowing at all on our walk. I have become accustomed to seeing the rivers and falls completely dry up around here, as the sun sucks the moisture out of everything that it looks at. With our backs to the city, we eventually turned to watch the setting sky glow over the business buildings, banks, mining offices and apartments. The million or so inhabitants and the skyscrapers felt insignificant from so far away, like a petri dish of growing bacteria, somewhere over there, down below.

We returned to our car as dusk was well underway, to be approached by several young men who advised us of our vehicle being broken into - as well as their own. They asked us for advice, as Emma advised, and I checked over our few belongings left in the car. It appeared that we had all lost our wallets, as well as Emma’s house keys and some medication. None of us were panicked, or furious, but we were frustrated at the inconvenience that this would inevitably cause - the cancelling of cards, fixing of windows, changing of house locks, reporting to the police, acquiring new drivers licences, medicare cards and such. Emma and I both worried about the three young men more than ourselves, they seemed to be here as foreign students perhaps, and had lost rather important items among their things. They departed with the sun, and we stayed to make our police report.

I found my ear buds, which had luckily been dropped in the backseat of the car, I then searched around the vehicle for any evidence or belongings as Emma discussed those same things with the police over the phone. I came across my roll-on stick of deodorant, out on the gravel by the front of the car, as I realised that my notepad was among my stolen belongings.

For several years now I’ve kept notepads on me, usually in a tote bag or a backpack, sometimes in my pocket too. Luckily I had already copied into my computer some of what was written in the pad, but a lot of the poems, ideas, scripts and mini stories were lost with it. This is what saddened me the most out of everything that was taken. But I reminded myself of my beliefs when it comes to artistic creation - forgive me if this all starts to come across as overly brooding or whimsical, I’ve always had a habit of thinking in a lot of words.

The way that I write has for the most part been through a flow-state, or what is known as “stream of consciousness”. I do not understand the concept of writer's block very well, because I’ve always been able to look at some paper, or a new document, and start writing down whatever wild words pop into my brain. Usually it is a string of absurd nonsense that I find kinda funny, but eventually, when you add enough words into the metaphorical jigsaw puzzle, you eventually start making sense of the story.

I would often speak with my mum in particular about my many imaginative ideas and projects, and she would say to me that I should be copyrighting them in some way before putting them out into the world. I understand the use of this for original intellectual property, but I also have heard of the hassle and costs associated with it. I think it is a value judgement to be made by each individual, but I would rather be spending my time pursuing the creativity itself, as much as possible. If it ever becomes possible for me to apply for patents or whatever through an agent or publisher of some kind, then in a lot of cases I would probably find it quite beneficial to have someone pursue that. But even if someone were to ever copy something that I had written, and create a successful product or a post with it, then I still would not feel overly furious about it. My personal philosophy with creativity is that - you should always be capable of something better, if one idea or one thing defines you beyond all else, and you feel unable to grow after creating that one thing, then you should probably stop. The purpose of all things is evolution, and if we are not always progressing, or causing progression, then we do become irrelevant, in all aspects of life.

That might sound a bit brutal, but keep in mind that this depends of course on your own personal goals. My goal is always self-improvement or personal development and internal growth. When it comes to the subjective nature of creativity, the only opinion that matters to me is my own. Now if your goal is to become financially successful with your creativity, then your metric is going to differ - as the measure of your success will be based on other people’s opinions, and not necessarily the continual evolution of your abilities.

So why I shared with you all this little story and ponderings - is because I am a tad saddened that I was not able to hold onto and share with you all, those short stories and poems from my little notepad. But also I want to tell you, as I have told myself - that those poems and stories were written, and though they may be lost, they do still exist. The simple act of just writing them down has had an effect on me, and I will go on to create more, and even better stories from them. Just like copying down the pages of a textbook for study - practice improves us. Even if I had lost 100 pages of the book that I am currently writing, I would continue on, and it would undoubtedly be even better than it was before. This is not to advise for the pursuit of perfection though - everything is as it is, absolutely perfect and imperfect all at once, and we need finished projects for future reference. So please don’t keep everything all to yourself, that’s why the internet can be great - put all of your practice out there, I guarantee that somebody wants to see it.

I hope in some small way reading this might help you in whatever it is that you aim to do, and with some luck, maybe we can even add a little bit of our own “good” into the world.