The Asexual Geek's 100th Post - If I Can Dream

 

Image description: The ending screen of the music video for BTS's 2020 song "On." Although I don't actually discuss "On" today, using this image as a cover seemed appropriate for this very special post and its theme - which, ironically, is heavily based on another song from another very famous artist.

When I was planning this year’s posts – something I actually did in the middle of last year – I realized something accidentally perfect: if all went according to plan, my last official post of the year would be my 100th post. To me, the idea of 100 posts is truly staggering; it was when I planned my 2023 posts out and it is now as I write said post. All my life, I have struggled with both motivation and consistency. Often, I have an idea, but no motivation to do it, and so the idea never gets off the ground for any number of motivation-killing reasons. Other times, if I have the motivation to get started or even have enough motivation to carry me a fair way through a project, I’ll end up losing that motivation due to a lack of consistency. My dozens of unfinished stories and other projects are a testament to that.

So when I began this blog back in February of 2020, it was enough of a miracle that I got it off the ground to start with, and then a further miracle to keep it going week in and week out. That type of consistency is something I’ve rarely if ever achieved with other projects and I’m proud to say that, apart from my holiday breaks and a week where I decided not to do a post because I was out of town for several days, I’ve never missed a planned post. (This is not something I can say for my K-Drama blog, where the problem isn’t so much motivation or consistency, just time commitments to other projects as well as real life obligations; but I hope to change that in 2024).

All this to say, 100 posts truly feels like a milestone worth celebrating, and I knew this would require a special post. However, for the longest time, I legitimately wasn’t sure what to choose for the topic of the post – what the main unifying idea to tie everything together could be, what I could say about the blog or this milestone, or what personal things I could discuss to mark what feels to me like a special occasion. In fact, it wasn’t until about a month or two ago that I thought of the perfect theme to put a bow on these first 100 posts. So today, in a departure from much of my usual fare, I want to talk about this blog, my dream for it, and how that dream has played out – looked at through a very unique and slightly unusual lens, but one that I feel is perfect for the way I feel.

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To start, my dad has always been a big fan of Elvis Presley. As such, I listened to a lot of Elvis with him while growing up and I developed a healthy appreciation of his music that continues to this day. However, if you were to ask me what my favorite Elvis song is, I wouldn’t answer with an overtly obvious or well-known song. Rather, my favorite – to the point where it’s the ringtone my dad uses on his phone to let him know when I’m calling – is the 1968 song “If I Can Dream.”

I’m not going to bore you all with details about how this song came into being or anything like that. And honestly, I don’t even have a profound story about why this song became my favorite Elvis song after a childhood spent with Elvis songs playing in the background. I just know that, from the first moment I heard this song, it spoke to me, and every time I hear it while driving around with my father or just pull it up for a listen on my own, it still speaks to me in that same way. The song, as the title implies, is about hoping for a better and brighter future – literally, the first line says “there must be lights burning brighter somewhere” – and this yearning hope resonates with me deeply.

Obviously this is a song that can touch anyone’s heart, and anyone who hopes to one day see peace and harmony can find themselves moved by the passion Elvis brings to it. But it's always resonated with me in a special way because my own dream is a hope to be accepted and treated with respect, and that others like me can have the same thing. As I always say on the blog, I have been very fortunate to find those things with family and friends, but that doesn’t mean my aspec journey has always been smooth. In fact, despite this terrific support system, I nevertheless struggle a great deal, and often struggle in silence.

Those struggles are part of what inspired me to want to make this blog, but they weren’t the whole story. In short, they weren’t the whole dream, especially since I don’t expect one little blog to be a source of any type of progress, and never did. In fact, I didn’t really know what to expect when I first created the blog. Talking about aspec issues is something I had been doing since high school; as I believe I’ve mentioned on the blog before, some of my posts – including, perhaps most notably, what eventually became my “Tropes” series – were adapted from essays I’d written years prior. So eventually it seemed logical to expand my analysis, which I had been doing privately, and which I was beginning to do for more and more of my favorite media as time went on.

When I first began toying with the idea of starting this blog, it was because I wanted to talk about these issues, sure, but it was also because I wanted to have a little credence when I gave presentations about these topics, as I did a few times at conventions. This actually becomes a little ironic when you consider the fact that I launched my blog in February of 2020, and as such, all the events at which I might have given presentations on aspec topics became non-existent for most of my blog’s early lifespan. But even after they came back, I realized that was not really what I wanted to do with this blog, or at least that the blog had grown far beyond that one goal.

But as I’ve kept going with the blog all the way to this, my 100th post, I’m left with the question of just what I do want from it. I don’t flatter myself that I’m making any kind of huge or profound impact, so I’m not asking myself the question “what do I hope to accomplish?” or something equally lofty and unearned; rather, I’m seeking to quantify what the goal is from the blog, my analysis, and why I keep doing these posts with a regularity that I’ve never given to anything else in my life. It’s more than just the fact that I have a lot to say (which anyone who has ever read one of my blog posts can tell you I do); it’s something deeper than that.

A few months ago, I was really going through a rough patch when it came to the analysis I do here. I know I say that a lot, and that I’m often quite open with my struggles about my aspec life and experiences, usually drawing inspiration for new posts from these setbacks. However, this time around, I was really starting to feel like I had no positivity regarding the subjects I was discussing. So I asked my dear friend Laura (who has helped me with blog ideas before) if that made me a hypocrite. I told her it felt disingenuous to be ending my posts with hopeful sentiments when it was beginning to feel like I couldn’t believe these sentiments myself.

Her response has been part of an ongoing paradigm shift I’m still trying to integrate into my life. She suspected that I actually do have hope, even if I don’t actively realize I do, because otherwise, why would I still be blogging? And this gives me the answer to the question of how I made it to 100 posts, with plenty more planned, and why I come back and do this each time without fail. It’s more than a goal or an accomplishment or an endgame, since I don’t know if any of those things are strictly possible. The answer is the theme of this post: it’s a dream. It’s a dream for myself and my own life, but also a dream of the world I would like to see.

I think perhaps the biggest (and most challenging) part of this thought process is to assure myself that even if that dream world never comes to pass, it’s enough that I’m dreaming it at all. Returning to the theme of this post and the song that inspired it, there is a lyric in “If I Can Dream” that refers to dreaming as something that requires strength. Indeed, the entire song views dreaming as something that can be redemptive and that can help us overcome the pain and hardships of our current circumstances, whatever they may be. In that way, “If I Can Dream” reminds me that dreaming isn’t always easy, happy, or even pleasant; sometimes it’s something born of desperate hope for something better, even when that “better” may not be near or even possible. But just like I’ve always found the song beautiful, I think there can be beauty in that idea too. Dreaming even impossible dreams is essential, even if we never see them come to pass, because dreaming is the only way to interact with a less-than-ideal world.

Just like my friend Laura said to me, it’s not hypocritical, disingenuous, or fake to try to create hope even when I don’t feel any. Rather, I’d like to believe I’m dreaming. It might sound a little lofty to say I’m dreaming of a better world – I’m not reaching for anything as globally impactful or universally applicable as Elvis was in his song, nor am I seeking to solve something as profound as world peace. But even if my dream isn’t that enormous, I think it’s still valid and I think it’s still important. After all, isn’t the hope for respect something everyone yearns for at some point?

Image description: Elvis Presley passionately singing "If I Can Dream". Image obtained from Google

In the song, Elvis talks about hoping to see a day where doubt and fear can be conquered by continual hope, and I think you can see why that would resonate with me. I think one of my favorite things about “If I Can Dream” is it does recognize that those doubts and fears exist – both when Elvis recorded the song and nowadays – and that, as I mentioned earlier, pain and hardship exist for all of us. It’s not that dreaming is the magic fix-all, but instead it’s the thing that helps us press on when things get tough. As I write this post, I think of all the times I do turn to this blog when I struggle, and I’m starting to reframe the idea of that.

I’ve always viewed this blog as a form of venting, or a way to make myself feel better, or at least a place where I feel I can unleash my emotions in a productive manner. In my recent dark period and in others, I’ve found myself using it as a breeding ground for comfort. Selfishly, I sometimes wish that I could be the one being comforted, even though I know that’s not how this can or should work. I would like to think that having a platform, even a small one, should mean comforting others, which is precisely why I felt so terrible when I didn’t have a lot of hope myself.

In previous posts, I’ve talked about how I’m more a realist or a pessimist than I am an optimist, so sometimes having hope and giving it to others can be a challenge in and of itself. This is why I felt that recent dark mood where I wondered if I was being a hypocrite. But the idea of this blog as a dream makes that feel better. I can realistically see the problems before us. I can realistically understand that they probably won’t get better overnight or may even always be lurking in the background. But I can make the conscious choice to dream and I hope, in so doing, I can encourage others to dream too.

As I said earlier, I know my reach is not wide and my work is not exactly “important.” But it is mine. It is my small way I can give voice to this little dream, and I’m so grateful I can do my tiny part. If I have comforted anyone, then I’ve comforted myself. If I’ve encouraged anyone to feel a little more hopeful, then I’ve given hope to myself. If I’ve given anyone the tools to describe the way they feel, then the blog has been a success in my eyes, and I feel very lucky. I don’t pretend it was always easy, but I think it was always worth it. And I think I can admit that – after almost four years and now 100 posts – I’ve created something special and uniquely mine that I can be proud of.

My blog is small and often very personal and extremely subjective, but I love that fact. Sometimes I’ve seen surges in it – such as when I used to post the links on Tumblr and one of my posts was shared by a large asexuality-specific blog there (this was amazing, but also led to a wave of anxiety and Imposter Syndrome that have made it difficult to get back to sharing the links on anything except Facebook and, very rarely, Twitter). Other times, I’ve seen little growth from unexpected and amazing sources, such as when someone else writing a blog post or article uses me as a resource, which is always beyond flattering. But for the most part, the blog has held pretty steady and I don’t mind that in the slightest.

Rather than make my blog about numbers or reach or metrics, it’s become about the journey. That sounds extremely corny, I’m sure, but it’s true. I’ve considered my entire identity’s development to be a journey, and taking this journey with the blog in my back pocket has allowed me to enjoy new experiences and ways of thinking I’d never experience. It’s given me access to new characters to enjoy, new books to read, new media to watch. It’s allowed me to have honest conversations with my friends about aspec issues with new confidence and understanding. It’s let me partner with people I care about to broaden my horizons in extremely special ways. And those things mean the world to me.

I am so grateful that I get the platform and the opportunity to express myself in this way, and that I have the freedom to communicate this dream every other week on Fridays. As always, thank you all from the bottom of my heart for dreaming along with me, whether you’re a reader I’ve never met or someone I know personally who has supported me every step of the way. I have so much more to discuss and – although I don’t know if I’ll make it to my two hundredth post – I have no intention of stopping anytime soon or giving up this crazy dream of mine. In that spirit of hopefulness, I’d like to end this special post with the final lines of “If I Can Dream,” a reminder to myself and hopefully to others:

While I can think, while I can talk, while I can stand, while I can walk, while I can dream, please let my dream come true right now.