"What Mark will I Leave on Earth?"

I know that question is futile to ask. You can't interrogate death—it's an unobservable social concept—yet it feels right to ask.

For someone like me who has both thanatophobia and athazagoraphobia , the notion, the sheer fact that I will die... well, it terrifies me. I don't want to die, as no one does, but that's the circle of life. I believe that, given this, it's why I've gravitated towards the concept of the triskelion —life, death, and rebirth.

Yes, I know that I have years left, but that question has nagged me ever since I was 14, give or take, when I started my anthology. Sure, it's just words on paper, but I hope to convey... myself, through the poems. If not to remember my name to avoid mors nominis alicuius, then to remember my thoughts after my death. I have, as of right now, 165 poems in the anthology—there's no set theme, it's just me from age 14 onwards. Hell, I don't know what I'd title it or how I'd organise it. If I do volumes, it would be something like 11 poems across 15 volumes at current count.

It could even be in this very blog, I suppose. I've written consistently since 2020 in my poems but only properly started blogging in 2023 with my review of the An American Werewolf in London BBC Radio Drama, soon moving onto a mix of technical posts and posts like this one. This doesn't even have a name either, it's just "Ewan's Blog." Nothing really special there.

It's one of those fears that doesn't really manifest as an outspoken panic-attack-type fear, more so an impending sense of dread and hopelessness. I think the reason I don't mind really seeing it in media (especially horror-adjacent) is because of the fact that it's not real, that it's not me.

Funnily enough, the whole cyclical nature of the triskelion is probably one reason for my lycanthropic special interest—becoming something other, but remaining as the self.

If I can make a mark on this planet, I just hope that people remember my name, who I was. I just hope it's in a positive light.