I finally got my groove back, and I am so happy!

For several months I've been struggling with feeling motivated to write fic and post it (not gonna bother linking my previous posts complaining lol) due to unresolved personal jealousy issues and just feeling on the outskirts of my friend group. I kinda put everything on pause because it wasn't fun anymore, and I didn't really feel like I had a community I belonged to.

But a few weeks ago, I was going through a bit of a nostalgia trip on Fanfiction.net out of boredom and stumbled upon some old Hunger Games fics I had completely forgotten about. I read a few from this one author who specialized in all-oc Hunger Games fics, and maybe they just scratched that itch I didn't know I had, because suddenly I spent an hour at night lying awake and thinking about doing a fic with a similar format. I started writing it the next day, and this was like 2 weeks ago. Since then, I have completed 8 of the 13 chapters I have planned, and uploaded three of them!

I don't know how to explain it, but all the negative emotions I had swirling towards fanfiction and writing beforehand were suddenly just...gone? Like, part of me insisted "okay, I *have* to put this fic out there and if it gets no comments, it gets no comments" and I just bit the bullet and threw the first chapter out there. That more or less forced me to commit to the fic and publishing the whole thing, so I'm glad I'm stockpiling lol.

But I'm glad for it! It's really gotten me to remember why I love writing and have made fanfiction a core part of my life for 10 years. Why I started in the first place, begging my parents to let make a FFN account on the family computer. It more or less feels like a weight has been lifted off my shoulders, especially since I was able to return to an older fanfic I hadn't updated since December and start pumping out chapters for that.