I would love to be a podcaster or performance artist. I’d love to be on the cutting-edge of what theatre and writing and queer art are. People talk about how the pandemic has changed their practice, but I’m not sure I had a practice to begin with.

I’m a doodler. I scrawl out writing when the impulse takes me. I come up with characters, draw them (with horrible anatomy and no shading), I play academic but never find it in me to do readings. I look at podcasters and ARGs and say “oh, I’d love to do that! I think I’d be good at it!”

But I don’t do it.

Energy drink. Sims 3. Xenoblade. YouTube creepypasta narration. Eat a whole bag of pretzel sticks. I’m not creating. I’m not even socializing. Other trans and queer people are put off by my nerdiness. Other nerds look at me and say “SJW”. I toy with what being an autistic trans man means, what it implies, why my experience isn’t the same, tossing and turning and circling around that identity until I want to curl up and cry.

Dysphoria, autism, ADHD, pandemic blues, school stress - pick your poison. Why am I so isolated? Why am I so unmotivated? This alienation, this creative dry spell - why, why, why? It’s a confusing ball of malaise. Maybe I’m missing the point trying to identify a single cause. Maybe every artist feels this way right now. Is COVID or my lack of ADHD medication to blame? Is it transphobia or dysphoria or guilt at being a man that makes gender so awful to consider?

I am not some revolutionary socially aware underground artist, or a Hollywood nerd bringing games onto podcasts, or an autistic trans multimedia artist with prolific output in odd games and writing, or a Japanese narrative director making sci-fi existential games, or a drag artist performing in clubs. I’m writing from inside a dark room. Empty cans of energy drinks, wearing clothes from the day before yesterday, resting my chin against an isopod plushie, worrying about my PC fan being so damn loud. Unshowered, behind on readings, glasses crooked, twitchy and lost. I am writing from inside a dark room. I am hiding in a dark room. I am scared of success in a dark room. I am overthinking what it means in a dark room.