First Letter: After Quiet Ruin

August 4th 2025,

On the tail end of the raging storm, the trickling rain taps against my face. Will I close my eyes and dance? Or will I run from the raindrops?

It’s been a still summer, though not in the way I imagined.

I keep thinking about that week in June—the incident in which gave many a panic, came like lightning cracks through my body. Five, all in a row. They took things. Not just days or memory, but the thread kept me tethered to myself, the one I thought made me who I was.

For a while, I couldn’t make anything. I couldn’t reach anything either.

I watched my life like a film I wasn’t in anymore. My art sat untouched. I sat with blank-faced eyes while the world spun and the days turned into nights. I sat there as the TV played familiar films from my past, and yet my mind could not connect.

🕯 What's Been Stirring in Me

There’s a strange silence after something breaks.

Not grief exactly. Not fear. But a quiet I didn't know how to fill—like standing in a room where all the furniture’s gone and realising you don’t remember where anything was supposed to go.

That’s where I’ve been.

In that quiet, I started looking inward. Deeper than I ever have. What does it mean to be a person who creates, if creation isn’t always accessible? Who am I without the output? Without the proof? What do I want out of life? What does it mean to live? What do I want out of my art? Why does art make me happy? Why do I create? Why does streaming make me happy? What does streaming provide me? Who would I be if I didn't have social media? If there were nobody in the world to watch me, what would I do, and who would I be?

I asked myself questions that felt too large for the room. I sat with them anyway, and I still am.

🎨 My Hands Have Been Making (Again, Slowly)

I returned, just a few weeks ago, to socials. To streaming. To sketch again.

It’s shaky. Still tender. But I’m here. And there’s something quiet and sacred about letting myself start small.

A few streams. A slow sketch. A half-painted idea. Preparing for the new semester.

But also,

I’m pulling back, I need to reconsider how I feel, and what I choose.

As I realize that I do much more deep introspection and consideration than I ever do doing and achieveing anything, I also come to realize, that in the end- on the other side of the tug and pull I hold within, I will finally find a confidence and a reliance that will allow me to find peace with my art and with my actions.

Something inside me keeps whispering: Make it slower. Make it real. Make it yours.

My doctor, whom I finally was able to seek out, also discussed with me to create a slower, more intentional, meaningful and calmer life. To truly consider the things I do and whether it would be good for the lifestyle I have, or whether I need to change it for the benefit of the meditative and calmer life I can create myself, both not only as a person, but for the condition I have within me. The damage already being done can be reversed, but it comes with intention, self-acknowledgement and from within.

🐚 The Shift I’ve Been Carrying

For the longest time, I’ve been circling this truth:

I don’t want to only make fanart, commissioned digital work, or digital pieces.

I want to shift toward something more embodied—traditional work, pieces that smell like paper, that hold pigment and weight and silence.

I want paintings that carry something sacred. Work that feels like a memory or a dream. Personal. Untamed. Connected to the inner landscape, I’ve spent all summer walking.

But quietly… I’m beginning to wonder if streaming, at least in the way I’ve been doing it, is the right vessel for where my art is headed.

Even in its slow and open rhythm, it pulls me outward—toward connection, yes—but also toward a kind of noise that gently untethers me from my deeper work. I’ve realised I’ve been reaching through the screen for something I need to heal within myself: an ache I’ve tried to soothe through presence and visibility.

And while there’s still beauty in sharing, maybe that sharing needs to shift.

Perhaps, for now, it looks like streaming only when it feels nourishing. Or crafting quiet, intentional YouTube pieces. A single image on Instagram, when I have something to say with my hands, not just my words.

Mostly… I want to return to the place where I make art to connect with myself first. And from there, maybe, it can reach others in a way that’s real and rooted.

🌾 Soft Rituals, Stillness, and the Way Forward

I’m not rushing.

I think my art wants me to stop performing life and start living it instead. With reverence. With slow hands. With silence where silence belongs.

Maybe this next chapter isn’t about building an audience, building friendships, building a place to be seen. Maybe it’s about building a body of work that breathes with me. I come first... and so too, shall others follow.

And maybe— this diary will be the space where that work begins to speak.

Today I drank tea with a brush in my hand, and for the first time in months, I didn’t flinch at the white page.

That feels like enough, for now.

~ Wani