Ever since I was a child, I wanted to be a writer. Not just someone who put words on paper, but someone whose words meant something. But that dream didn't come easy. I was a slow learner and people said I had a “low IQ,” and I didn’t really understand English until I was around twenty. To me, English used to sound like static in the background, something people were speaking at me rather than with me. Still, the desire to write never went away.
When I was younger, I kept a journal. It was private, my little world of thoughts. But one day, my mother found it. She took it away and warned me never to write things that didn’t fit into the norms of our Asian society. That moment hurt more than I could say, but it also planted something in me: a quiet, steady resolve.
Later, I got my first phone, a classic Nokia phone that I still use today [est 2003], the kind you could throw at the wall and it wouldn’t break. It became my window to the world. In my twenties, I started experimenting with writing short articles and sharing them online. Places like Academia.edu were the early playgrounds. It was around that same time, during the years I spent immersed in study and reflection, that writing started to become a real part of me.
In 2013, I launched my first blog. It was rough, personal, and scattered across topics. I tried sharing my thoughts on social media, but often found myself flagged or shadowbanned. I’d delete and restart over and over again, just trying to stay visible. At one point, I bought my first domain just for fun. I lost access. Then I bought more. Slowly, the idea of taking this seriously began to take root. And by late 2024, I launched this blog.
So why now?
Because in the past, people wrote letters and journals to survive. Now, we write blogs. This isn’t just a hobby for me, it’s how I stay afloat. I’m trying to earn through AdSense, affiliate links, and maybe the occasional donation through “Buy Me a Ko-fi.” I don’t have a degree. I barely got through high school. My spoken language, any of them isn’t fluent. I stutter. My grammar’s broken. But writing gave me a voice I didn’t know I had.
Here’s the truth: I live with multiple health issues. Anxiety. Depression. Schizophrenia. Epilepsy. Insomnia and some others. Some nights, I don’t sleep at all. I just sit, think, write, repeat. I’m working on several creative projects at once: a novel no one’s bought, a video game I’m developing in Unity but unsuccsessful because zero background knowledge in coding, songs I’ve released with no listeners. All of this effort trying to pay down my lingering education loan. It’s all uphill. It’s messy. But it’s mine.
For the record, the process for every article or blog post I create begins with a eureka moment—an idea that suddenly comes to me. I then draft it on paper or in the cloud. After that, I repurpose and refine the grammar using Grok to generate a well-written article with proper grammer based on fact-checked information. Finally, it gets posted on my blog.
Why do I do it this way? You see, I'm not fluent in any language—not even my mother tongue or the national language of my own country of origin. In fact, I speaks in a broken dialect that most people in my own country cannot easily understand. Grok helps me communicate, express, and convey my thoughts clearly in written form. I am committed to posting fact-based articles and always welcomes corrections and advice if anything seems off or inaccurate.
If you’ve read this far, thank you. Sharing this blog helps more than you know. If you’re able, consider buying through my affiliate links or sending a small donation. But even if you can’t, just knowing someone’s out there reading means the world.
And if you pray, say one for me.
I’m still here.
— 시온