As a quick note to the audience before my next feature posts (October 1^st), I wanted to say this: Hi. I’m back. It’s been a while, and I could bore you with a thousand and one reasons for why I haven’t been posting, but I won’t. My intense hatred of excuses would never allow that. I certainly don’t deserve a reprieve for my tremendous laziness, and while you could tell me I shouldn’t beat myself up too much for it, that advice would probably fall on deaf ears. Discipline is what I lack, and it’s something I need if I truly want to become stronger…and I do. I really do take to heart the simple lessons of life that come with your typical shounen anime. As childish, corny, idealistic, or just plain naïve as it may seem, I want to be the very best, like no one ever was. I want to be the symbol of peace, the number one hero. I want to be the goddamn Hokage, BELIEVE IT!

…but I’m not going to get there by posting once a month, barely writing at all, producing nothing and losing my hair over the inordinate amounts of stress I put onto myself. I’m always thinking I’m almost past the bottleneck, but then my body keeps getting tighter and tighter. My throat’s closing up, my brain is bursting out of my head, and my eyes are so rolled back I can see the inside of my skull. The silver lining is, the stress seems to be worth it. I think I can safely say now that I’ve earned enough scholarships to afford a study abroad in Japan next spring. I’m going to be living the weeaboo dream, baby! But I can’t let up just yet. There’s plenty of work to be done on myself, and I’m the only one that’s able to do it. That means more writing, more studying, and less useless entertainment. Things like completely un-educational YouTube videos or videos games based solely around mindless grind. I must accept that these things aren’t useful to me, and I should do well to lessen their grip on my life. I still like hanging with friends and playing games online, but I have to accept that stuff like that isn’t even close to the best use of my time, let alone top 50.

What I’m trying to say is…it’s time to delete Fortnite—haha. I kid, though I actually am deleting Fortnite. My real point is I don’t deserve this. I’m not some even remotely relevant YouTuber. I don’t have sponsors of any kind and my follower count doesn’t even break 200 on Twitter. It might seem silly to have what’s seemingly imposter syndrome when I know I’m someone of comparatively miniscule-esteem, but the truth is, I don’t deserve a single damn follower…yet here I am with a handful of readers. And I’ll never allow myself to forget the value of that: of a single person’s time. There’s always going to be an infinite number of things you could be doing during your finite lifespans, so the fact that you spent even a moment on me…that’s pretty fucking neat, and so I believe I should keep working to the point where I feel like I do deserve this. My lifestyle will probably have to change a bit and that’s fine. Whatever the filter of the day may be, I gotta keep looking through it towards the bright future ahead of me.

Anyway, I’ll have more news of what’s to come for There Goes My Kokoro in the coming days. Until then, thanks for reading…and for your patience.