the life and times of a pandroid

When I was in my third and last year of high school, about two years ago, all third year students had to do a project that would be graded. Due to my school being a media school, most students did something close to what we had made during those three years, like movies, radioshows, musicvideos and such. Some did photography, others designed clothes, and everyone showed their works on the final day. I didn’t really know what I was going to do, so I joined up with some friends who where going to write a song, record it, do a video of it, and a final videodiary documenting it all. The diary wasn’t very serious, we joked around and it became kind of like mockumentary. We had fun, but my heart wasn’t really into it, so with two months left before we where supposed to be finished with our works, I dropped out the group and decided to do something I really wanted to do.

I wanted to write.

Now, starting over from scratch with only two months left probably wasn’t the smartest thing to do, but I didn’t really give a fuck. I was going to write, and nobody was going to stop me. I have always liked to write and tell stories since I was kid. When I was in my early teens the only thing I wrote was fantasy ripoffs, because at that that time I was a fucking geek. Well, I probably still am when I come to think about it. Anyways, the stuff I wrote in my early teens was, to put it simple, a huge pile of fucking shit. The kind of stuff geeky teens write that you, when you are older, just laugh at.

Back to the story. Now, at this time, I was 18 years old. I only recently started writing again. I had gotten tired of fantasy and videogames. Instead I had grown to love stories about regular life, about ordinary people and their ordinary problems. So, my first plan was to write a collection of short stories. So I started to write. One of the ideas I had was about three people waiting for the local train in the middle of the forest during the night. Like most ideas for stories I got it while actually waiting for the train. Well anyway, I had a few ideas for about four or five shorts. But something didn’t feel right, I wasn’t really into the stories. So I started over again.

One month left.

I stayed home from school one day, once and for all deciding to write something really good. So I stayed in bed, played music nonstop and just wrote. What came out was a story I that had been in my head for a while. Basically, it was about a famous Swedish filmmaker, specialised in documentaries about different conflicts around the world, who had just recently moved back home to Stockholm after about sixteen years abroad. One day, returning home from a meeting, he meets a young woman who tells him that she is his daughter. And so the story begins. It was a story about rejection, doubt and to finally take responsibility for your actions.

At that time, I was really proud of it. I still am. Because I had always doubted myself, thinking that I couldn’t write something serious, or even finish a story. And know I had finally made it. Just three hours before I was supposed to show the teachers my work. I got the highest possible grade from my english teacher, who was also a teacher in creative writing, and a pretty okay grade overall (we where supposed to write logs and analyse our own work). After graduation my only goal was to write a book and get it published. I had tons of ideas, and high on the praise I had gotten for my novel, failure wasn’t even on the fucking map. So, did I make it?

No.

Since graduation I have managed to drop out twice, and I haven’t written a single page during these two years. Lately I have started to look at myself and my life with different eyes. I have come to the conclusion that I am not going to study something unless I really want to. Both times since graduation have been because I didn’t want to feel like I was wasting my life. Which was exactly what I was doing when I studied. I have decided to get a new job because, although I like most of the people I work with, it really is a lowpaying peice of shit job that I hate. And most importantly, I have started writing again.

I don’t care if I never publish a book in my entire life. That doesn’t really matter to me anymore. I just want to tell stories, to create something that other people will read and maybe make them think a little. Just like I have been touched by other peoples work, I want people to feel something when they read something I have written.

But in the end I just want to write.