I Can't Just Write a Space Opera

I've been struggling with my mental health lately.

I've had anxiety and depression for as long as I can remember. I've always battled with self-worth and the weight of expectation, and it's something I've discussed in great detail with therapists. I know what regular mental health issues feel like.

This feels different, something more societal. If I look at the world around me right now, I see a borderline apocalyptic scenario. Fascism is on the rise globally. People around me, in a developed country, are going hungry. I'm terrified to leave my apartment because I'm afraid the people around me have such a fundamentally different worldview from me that they think I shouldn't exist.

Would any sane person feel okay?

I grew up on the Internet in the age of liberalism. Generally, the world was moving towards a more tolerant position in a variety of ways. Some of the people I care about most are minorities in some way, even if I'm not much of a minority myself, and I can't see these people as anything but equals. It makes me angry as more and more of the world, even people I care about, see other human beings as lesser, "vermin" to be squashed.

I'm 22, Gen Z, and I've spent my adulthood watching the life my generation was promised be ripped away from us. Cost of living is getting out of control. I'm lucky enough to make a six-figure salary, and even still I'm scared I might never get to retire. Hell, if things continue to worsen there's maybe even a chance I might never get to buy a house, which is already a reality for the vast majority of my peers.

I'm watching genocides happen with the horrifying knowledge that I'm contributing to them. I'm a taxpaying American so already some of my tax dollars are going towards Israel, and worse I work in the military industrial complex launching spy satellites that they're realistically probably using to bomb hospitals and shit. It's not quite the same as weapons manufacturing per se, but I still feel guilty as hell and like I've got blood on my hands.

I'm trying to do everything right, to do something to make me feel like my life aligns with my moral values. I've donated to the PCRF, protested, made a ton of noise online. But I can't just quit without a new job lined up, I have bills to pay, and with the odds stacked against me because I was unlucky enough to grow up when I did, I need something with similar salary to what I'm currently making to maintain my current quality of life. It's a weird contradiction, and it keeps me up at night.

Things are really bad right now. I find myself often questioning if my presence in society is a net positive or negative on the world, and frankly I'm not entirely sure. What I really want at the end of the day is a world where every human being can be themselves and find their calling, and right now it feels like we're sliding away from that at an accelerating pace.

It's terrifying.

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I live in the United States. You might have noticed I spell that word describing electromagnetic radiation as "colour", not "color", and I spell a synonym for middle as "centre." My language in my Obsidian workspace, which I use to write this blog, is set to Canadian English.

The only tie I have to Canada is that my girlfriend is a Canadian citizen and has never lived in the US. I've never lived in Canada, I don't even have permanent residency there. So why do I write in the dialect of English of a country I'm barely connected to?

The obvious answer that I'd initially suggest is that I want to move there. I fell in love with Toronto as a city when I first visited in April 2024, and that summer I fell in love with my girlfriend. She's trans, so for obvious reasons she's not particularly interested in moving to the US. Hell, even as a cis guy, I'd be hesitant to move to the US too if I wasn't already American. Things aren't the greatest here right now.

I'm currently long-distance with my girlfriend, and I'm tired of it. I live alone and I'm starved for human touch. I'd kill to be able to kiss her physically all the time, snuggle with her, hug her - we're both going through things, and although I'm glad the internet allows us to be together at all, it sometimes feels like I can't be there for her properly, and she can't be there for me properly, because of the massive gulf of distance between us.

So that's why I want to move to Canada. But there's more to it. My moving plans for Canada fell through earlier this year when I got lowballed from a job offer after activating a work permit under promise of a higher salary. The work permit has a lifetime maximum of times you can activate it, and I had to sign a lease right afterwards, so this effectively permanently screwed my chances of moving to Canada long-term through the avenue I was planning. Now my only way up there is through either marriage (which I'm hesitant to do without having lived with my girlfriend first, though I do love her to bits), or getting lucky enough to have a company sponsor me to immigrate (which will only become less likely as Trump screws over all our international treaties).

So why the hell do I still write in Canadian English, when I no longer have any plans to move there? I could just change the language in Obsidian back to American English, say color instead of colour, and all would be fine and dandy. But subconsciously, something drags me away from it. And I think it's because currently, internationally, being American carries some baggage - people expect you to be one of those rednecks now who votes for Trump and probably abuses children, and since I'm very much not that, I'm scared to portray myself as American on an international stage like the internet.

Contrary to popular belief, America does have culture, and does have ideals. I would know; I grew up here. It's just that somehow, fascists have co-opted it; being American used to mean you believed in freedom, liberty, and democracy for all, but now you've got armies of people brandishing the stars and stripes who believe the direct opposite. I feel like my culture and country is being stolen from me, and I guess I've reached out to Canada in desperation to feel like I belong somewhere. But no matter where I walk I'm still an alien.

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I've been trying to write a space opera.

It's actually on this website. From the non-blog homepage, there's a button to go there right alongside the blog button on the navbar. I've put out a prologue and a first chapter, and that's all I've put out. The last chapter was over two months ago, and although I had a complete draft of Chapter 2 in late August I still have yet to publish it.

I've been making excuses for why I hadn't published anything. And in some capacity, they're totally valid. Late August, I went on a trip to Canada to visit my girlfriend. I got back and immediately got swamped with work. Then mid-September, I flew out again to try and get everything ready for a new job and a move to Canada. That fell through, and when I got home I had to move out anyway, so I spent late September and early October moving, and then proceeded to get sick throughout mid-October, which I've just recovered from this week.

But after all that, two months have passed, and I'm struggling to get back into writing. I'd like to imagine it's just me being rusty; it's always hard to get back into stuff after an extended break. Still, though, I had some time in early September that I could've finished Chapter 2; why didn't I?

Thinking back to that time, I recall what I was doing - outlining future chapters. I was stressed about flying by the seat of my pants, with only a vague idea of where the story was going to go. I'd initially promised myself to try to write this story more chapter-by-chapter; I've gotten bogged down in planning before, and the only time I've managed to actually write a full novel was in the form of a fanfiction of my friend's book, where I just kept writing shit, quality be damned. So taking that approach would surely solve all my woes, right?

So why the hell was I outlining stuff in excruciating detail, instead of writing the damn book? And why the hell is it that now, upon finally having some time to write again, I'm more interested in outlining than finishing Chapter 2?

I realized the answer this morning. It's that I can't just write a space opera.

I've written a space opera before. It's the aforementioned fanfiction. I initially was going to make it a trilogy, but I had a falling-out with the creator of that universe (though we've since made up) and decided to rework it into my own thing. That's what eventually evolved into my current book project. And for a while, I've been trying to just take the plot I wrote already and adapt it to make sense in my own setting.

When I try to write a "space opera" I'm taking inspiration from something like Star Wars or my friend's book. Something that isn't as focused on deep concepts as much as it is about driving the plot forwards. It's like an action movie compared to a more slow-burning mystery film - more spectacle over substance, less thinking and more doing . Tell over show.

Except - when I think about it, those stories do have a lot of conceptual stuff in them! Star Wars tells the story of a democratic republic's slow descent into fascism. My friend's book explores self-identity and choosing to be yourself instead of what people tell you you're supposed to be. They've all got emotional depth. That's why people fucking care about them!

I'm the only one who ever cared about my writing.

I write primarily as a way to vent. My mental health has been a constant battle since childhood. I initially wrote songs in the shower to express my emotions, my feelings that I wasn't living life for myself , and it was my form of therapy, my way to abstract my thoughts and shield myself from the harsh reality of existence.

I've still written songs over the years. I've always viewed it as my main emotional outlet. I tried making music some time ago and could never release anything because I've got a terrible voice and can't sing. And my writing is personal enough to me that hearing it come out of someone else's mouth wouldn't feel right.

I write books because it's the only way to vent my emotions that I'm good at. I'm a programmer by trade. I can't express how I feel about the socioeconomic state of America in a for loop. If I bottle everything up I'm eventually going to explode - I need an outlet, and I initially wrote so my writing could be that outlet, but I got so caught up in writing something readable that I forgot to make it about something along the way.

So why the fuck am I writing a space opera? Why the fuck am I writing something that I can skim through in a lunch break and gain nothing from? Why the fuck can I not finish writing anything?

Because that's why I'm outlining. I need to twist my ever-changing life into allegory, meld it into the world of a coherent novel so I can process it. And as the world falls apart, I can't just write a space opera. I have to write something that takes the failing state of our society, chops it up into something people can understand, and present an idea as to how to address it. I have some shit to say, and I need to say it.

What other choice do I have?