It's okay to be bad at it, just do something. Do you intend to go to your grave without having accomplished anything?

Please start it. Whether you do something or not, you will eventually die.

About the people I respect

Since I started taking the act of 'writing down my thoughts' seriously in a place like this, I feel that my respect for people who do things in public has increased.

I have always liked doing things myself. When I was a teenager, I learned programming and made various games to publish online, and since I play instruments in real life, I sometimes perform live in front of people. I even designed and distributed flyers myself.

This doesn't mean I'm an overflowing fountain of creativity. I spent all my time facing my computer and the internet because I didn't have any reliable friends in the real world, and even the instruments I started playing after I became a bit more socially adapted are, in a way, one of the few tools I use to build friendships because I am clumsy. When people are truly at a dead end, they look for other ways out, after all.

Even with that background, I feel that the change since I started facing this act of 'writing' has been special. Even before I tried to become a writer, I had musical friends who would perform at a professional level while working as regular company employees, and friends who would hold solo exhibitions as painters while working other jobs. I have respected such people for a long time. Why has a different change occurred within me now?

Is this person telling the truth?

What I am dealing with in 'writing' is the area concerning the foundation of who I am—how a person affirms their own life. I think the recent change was special for me because I started thinking much, much more seriously about things I thought I had already been thinking about seriously, and I became conscious of the persuasive power that entails.

You can say anything if you just say it with your mouth. You can say anything. Whether there is persuasive power in it depends on how that person actually lives and what kind of figure they actually show. If there is a lie there, it will be seen through. People are quite good at noticing such things. There is an old saying about 'speaking with one's back,' and while it would be bad if that meant abandoning verbal explanation, persuasive power that exists outside of words is a reality.

What I saw in the performers around me is this thing that should be called persuasive power. These people are doing something in public. They are properly doing things that shouldn't be easy, the steady training and trial and error of days that are neither glamorous nor anything else. They are seriously doing things that might not even make money, things that might not be rewarded. This person is not lying. Not to themselves, and not to others. Amazing. Truly amazing.

So, where is your stage?

Are these people special human beings different from you and me? Is that really the case? To become a performer in this internet society, you shouldn't need to quit your job and bet everything on it.

Please don't borrow other people's words. Speak in your own words. Let the people on the sidelines say what they want. That is truly a matter of no importance. Whether you are good or bad at it is irrelevant. That doesn't matter either. Start right now. Put on your best clothes and go outside. Get on stage quickly. Start dancing there.

Please don't just skim over this.

If your life's only terminal station is the graveyard, what you do before that is truly important. Get on stage quickly. I am talking about your own stage. Do it right now and show me something that is not a lie to you.

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