I had an epiphany the other day. It has come to my attention that if you took away my writing, I don't know what I would do. Like, literally. I would have no other real hobby o.o

It depressed me for a second. I have no life TTwTT I eat, I sleep, I go to school, I do schoolwork, etc. I spend a lot of time just surfing around on the net that it could almost be what I 'do' in my free time. But no. Noooooo. When I had that epiphany, I realised this:

When I need something to motivate me through a long school day, I think of going home and writing.

When I read books the first thing I do after finishing and revering it (if it's a good book), is start conjuring up ways I can use some of those themes/character traits/ideas in a story.

When I have nothing to do, I itch to write.

When I can't write and have zero inspiration, I literally sit there and glare at the monitor.

When I'm eating, I try to think of story ideas.

When I'm on public transport, I think of story ideas yet again. In fact, I sometimes take the longer bus just to have an extra ten minutes.

When I'm busy and dying under schoolwork, I look forward to a shower because I can think about story ideas without wasting time.

When I'm procrastinating and doing mundane stuff like clicking through all my browser bookmarks two dozen times, I feel guilty for not using my free time to write.

And yet I don't even write as frequently and feverishly as I did when I was younger. It takes me months just to get myself in the right mood to write 1000 words, which more often than not turns out to be some pretty bad writing anyway.

And yet I can't stop thinking about it no matter what I do.

Even when I sleep, I'm making up narratives and scenes in my head! Wut is this?! I can't believe it. I've been doing this for like a decade, and only now do I see how awkwardly domineering this 'hobby' of mine is ==; Man, I feel like a geek.

The most amazing thing is that I know exactly when I started writing. I might've written sporadically before but that moment was when I really got into it. I think I was in year 3. It started from a dream about Digimon. It was about little baby Digimon running down a tunnel with this big Digimon chasing after them, and they'd scurry about and say 'JUMP!' every time the big Digimon snapped at them. It was the most vividly remembered dream I'd ever had. I love Digimon for this very reason <3

But that's not the point! The point is that the dream made me go 'PING! I can write stories using characters from shows I like!' And so I started writing fanfiction before I even knew what it was. Nearly ten years later, I'm still writing fanfiction but writing has become what I do. It's ludicrous. I love it, sure, but I never fashioned myself as having a passion for it or anything. Maybe I do and it's just not registering on my radar. Writing is writing. It's something I've grown up with. I just didn't realise it defined me so much >.>

But here's where my optimism kicked in! Yes, I feel really geeky after realising how much I actually think about it, and when people ask me if I have a hobby, honestly answering with 'reading and writing' sounds halfhearted. But! I love writing. And I'm happy that I have a so-called hobby at all that keeps me anchored to, uh... my sense of self? I feel like I'm doing something right when I write <3

But still. I'm human and writing is like water. It's not to the point where I can't live without it but I sure am living with it. It makes up 70% of me (the rest is sleeping).

Do you know how disturbing that is? >.>