This site and my writing future

For 20 years I have been writing casually in one way or another. I wanted to start writing after reading a Series of Unfortunate events through grades 5 and 6. In the Scholastic book fair, a notebook called The Blank Book was available, and it was one of the only times I had ever asked my parents to buy me something from there. The Blank Book was a journal with A Series of Unfortunate Event art on it, and at the bottom of many of the pages were quotes from different books in the series.
Three years ago I started writing on Substack. At first they were flimsy journal entries that droned on like the ending of a chapter of Moby Dick, but soon I started writing stories again. After nearly a full year of weekly articles I was so incredibly happy with how much my writing had personally progressed. While last year I took many steps back in terms of productivity, I am happy to say that this website is me fighting against writing leaving my life again for a long stretch of time. On this website you will find what I consider to be my best writing. I'm doing this now as a sort of real beginning. My writing has always been personal to me. Not in that it describes my life, but more that I've often staked my ego on it privately. To let others see that side of me is in part terrifying. Writing lays oneself bare, strips everything that intonation, expression, and often context bring to communication. Some of the words I live by most truly have come from incredibly beautiful writing.
In this site you will find three articles and four short stories.
The articles include my favourite video games of the past two years, my thoughts on masculinity in the current state of the world, and what knowledge we consider to be forbidden vs. historically what has actually been forbidden.
The short stories are what I would consider more entertaining and closer to what I want to create in the future. I recommend more than anything that you read Harmonious Arrangements. This story is perhaps my favourite thing I've written. It's about the fruitlessness of perfection, how stale life is under mass consumption and that we can get better.
As the world changes, as I get older, and as I feel the incessant need to advocate for change, I want to have expressed something in this life that will outlive me. As I grow older I recognize my place in this world a little more. I grow frustrated and thankful for different things. It seems to be part of the experience of growing older. More than anything I think back to who I was ten years ago. Someone who wanted to be something, but who didn't have a clue as to what. I think about my different and failed attempts at a political life. (I count my lucky stars everyday that this isn't who I became.) I think about the hard times, when I was depressed and didn't even really know it. I think about now being with someone I love and how eternally grateful I am. I think about my friends who I care deeply for, and for the first time in a deeply insecure life, I feel like they care for me just as much. I am as lucky as can be and I recognize that.
When it comes to my writing I do have a goal. It may seem myopic at first but I ask that you trust me. I've been forthright with people I'm close to about my want to help young men. I want to help them navigate a world that I believe can lead them to ruin. I myself fell down such a path when I was younger. With the vast amounts of junk information out there, men are at risk of extremism, sexism, racism, and all other maladies of the mind. There is a coordinated effort by people in power to make people believe other regular people are the cause of all of life's problems, and not that the powerful people with all the money, influence, and decision making power aren't. More than I've experienced in my life are people blaming immigrants and poor people for problems that are those of corporations and governments. My niche should always be to help young men of this age see that pathway as abjectly wrong.
This website is also intended to spark something else in me. The will to start the next chapter of my writing journey. What has become more true to me is that I want to write long pieces of fiction. Books plural. I have had ideas for stories since I was a child. While many have ran their course I've also continued to develop many of them over years in my head. My goal for the coming year will be to work on finishing one. I doubt I will be able to get anything published with a major publisher, but I will self-publish a work once it has been completed. I have roughly three novel ideas that I think have enough legs to stand on their own. once I send out this article, post on my Instagram for everyone to see I will be working constantly on this piece of fiction. If you think I have anything at all interesting to say then I hope you'll stick around and read it.

Practically this site serves as my portfolio. It will be what I direct people to when they ask to read my writing. Substack has served me well over these past years and it isn't out of the question that I post there again, but truly my next goal is to write something big, and something I'm as proud of as the things on this site.