Hello, this is going to be a far more personal post than most. I don’t shy away from emotions and all that jazz ever. I openly admit to crying my eyes out for every episode of Ranking of Kings, for god’s sake, but this is going to talk a lot about how I’ve changed over the past almost 18 months since starting the blog.

To begin, I want to say that I am not the same person I used to be. My personality is mostly the same, and a few of my beliefs are, but the entire person that is me has been completely altered forever, very unexpectedly, and in ways that I never thought would happen.

I don’t hide that I wasn’t a very passionate person not long ago. I had no aspirations, goals, dreams, anything, and I was just coasting through life without any sort of purpose. That changed a lot when I began writing and changed even more when I started Side of Fiction.

I think I’ve said it here before that I did not like the person I used to be. I wasn’t particularly awful or anything, but there was a lot I didn’t like about myself, and thinking back, I’m a much better person in general than I was then. That’s not to say I’m great now, I have a lot of faults, some of which I’ll likely never get past, but overall, I feel more well-rounded than before and like I understand myself to a certain extent.

This whole journey has been about awakening some dormant passion and fire in me that I never knew I had, and once that broke free, a lot of things started to change. Being a small creator opened me up to an entire world full of people that I never knew existed, and to be honest with you, I probably wouldn’t have cared about any of it before. I know I wouldn’t have, in fact.

I, sadly, was the type of person that didn’t get small creators or anything driven by passion. It’s not that I didn’t get what passion was, but since I never had it, I couldn’t relate. I didn’t really, truly understand why creators would put in as much work as they do into their stuff if hardly anyone would ever see it. I thought it was pointless, and they would never amount to anything, and I’m kind of disgusted that I used to truly believe that.

I think all small creators suffer from those thoughts occasionally, but I didn’t see any point in trying or why people got happy over even the smallest amount of attention. It just didn’t make sense. I got it in theory, but I didn’t really get it, you know? I was the guy that thought, “what’s the point in doing something if you’ll never be as big as everyone else?” Yeah, I sucked hard.

Fast forward to now, me being a small creator for over a year, and I’ve become the biggest advocate of passion projects, following your dreams, and trying to do my best to support everyone I possibly can with their dreams no matter what form that support takes. I did the biggest 180 of all time. So much so that I most definitely seem like I care a little too much, which is the truth. I’m all or nothing. I care very hard or crash and burn trying.

It’s honestly very hard for me to believe how much I have changed my views and how quickly, but it comes from walking a mile in someone else’s shoes. I got to see what it’s like to actually build something from the ground up and see how happy I myself got when I got my first follow or comment. I understood everything right then and there. It was like that switch finally went off and made me stop being a moron.

But it’s about more than me having the same experiences as other people. I care about this site, the channel, and all of this stuff I’ve built more than any one of you can possibly imagine. All of my free time is for it. Even if I never grow past the point I am now, I would consider it all worth it. This has become my precious internet child, and while I want success, I’m willing to never get it.

That got me thinking that if I care about my child as much as I do, I wonder how much everyone else cares about theirs? That thought is what changed me a lot into who I am now. The whole thing humbled me a lot, and I learned and grew so much more than I ever thought I would for something so simple.

It ended up changing my entire mindset, and that spiraled out of just me on the internet and into me in real life as well. Because I made this spur-of-the-moment decision to become a small creator with a dream, I’ve had a chance to meet and talk to so many awesome, strong people that I probably would have never understood just a year ago.

Those very same people are now my motivation to keep striving to be better, even if we’re all on different paths. We are joined by the common goal to create and improve. It’s beautiful, and everything stemmed from a stupid anime blog. That’s about all I have to say. Nobody is perfect. Growth can happen, and it’s good, and it can come from unexpected places. Good stuff.

Thank you very much for reading

Follow your dreams.