Kevin Liu

Hello again. Today I will try to be less of a rambling author and be more thoughtful with my words. A good author chooses his (their) words wisely, each word having a reason to be there. It's like the stories of being at the right place at the right time and being majorly successful. Unluckily for you, I am not a good author - so you'll just have to bear with me.

I seem to have issues with a singular medium. Before, when I stopped writing, it was because writing about trauma triggered me. One time, I walked out of the house, no phone, no watch, no emergency medication. I walked to the end of the block, turned the corner, and stopped. I felt the wind rush by as the cars raced along the road. It suddenly reminded me of the car incident, which in the future I will write as A9, to make it sound cooler. I turned around and headed back home, but my right leg was already trembling. I took long, deep breaths as I convinced myself that even if I had an emergency, there were people around who would stop to see if a person walking with a cane was purposefully shaking on the ground. When I got home, I realized my dependance on fast communication and having knowledgeable people around. I'm sure I have other triggers from the A9 incident; It will be hard for me to pick up driving again, especially in the are where I crashed.

Anyway, back to the matter at hand. In my quest to become a better writer, I need to write more. That is the only reason I got a Freewrite device, because there are no other functions on this thing: no mail (other than to email writing), no games, nothing. Just my eyes, my brain, and my hands tapping at a keyboard. I have a few ideas that are not original at all. Maybe I'll write a memoir, compiling events I remember (or misremember) from childhood to current day me. Maybe I'll write a book about my (current) survival despite my cancer's best efforts. Heck, maybe a publisher would be interested in releasing a novel, written by an author, published immediately upon their death. That's an interesting gimmick, isn't it? To avoid survivorship bias, and to maintain the authenticity of the author: they do not benefit from the potential fame or revenue from books sold.

Anyway, I got off topic again. Sorry about that. I'll try not to do it again. The other medium I used was videos uploaded to YouTube. Every day, I would sit in front of my camera and record 5 minutes of video, typicallly talking about my day. It was still going strong past 100 days, and then I started graduate school. Soon, my videos felt repetitive: I had this class today, I learned xyz. There was no joy, I wasn't excited or dedicated to make the video. My recent videos are not much better, I start rambling and going on tangents that I didn't mean to go on. I would accidently film it in S&Q (slow and quick, effectively slow motion) mode. I can retrieve the original video by speeding it up by x4, but the mode does not record audio so it's worthless footage unless you're deaf and can lip read.

So now I'm back to writing, after I lost my job, started using a cane, finished another 15 days of radiation therapy, started and quit a master's program, and botched my 141st YouTube daily video. I intend to put these posts on my actual website, which has no feedback system: no likes, subscribe, bookmark, share, or comments. I want to reread all the stuff I put on Substack and maybe review or rewrite them. A new chapter: kevvrites the writer. Which is super ironic because the whole point of the double v is to imitate a "w" as in "writes." I probably overthought that one way too hard, and I thought I was being clever.

These posts are getting pretty long, and I haven't decided yet what I'll be writing about. But for now, I'll just finish with the classic "What did I today?"

I had an MRI super early, at 8am in the city. The warm blanket and repeating dut-dut-dut and click-click-click put me to sleep as usual. When that was done, I went to a higher floor to get a pulmonary test, to check if my medication chemo was affecting my lungs. The test is pretty hard because you need to actively think about breathing, but breathe normally, but also breath out (both fast and slow, for different tests) and hold your breath. There was one point where they close the valve (essentially creating a vacuum) and tell you to keep panting as if you're running and out of breath - but there's no air. After that breathtaking exam, I spoke with my neuro-oncologist who was very happy with my MRI results (no change when compared to previous MRI), and a medical doctor who evaluated my movement capabilities. Free as I am currently, my days are only filled with reading, writing, exercising, and gaming, though my exercise of choice is playing Ring Fit Adventure. I told her she can register me for more physical and occupational therapy sessions to work on my legs and arms - there are still many weak muscles. I still have a lot to do. This seems like a good stopping point for today.

Until next time,
Kevin