May 8, 2025, 10:46 a.m.

So-called “internal” affairs and 🎻🍣.

Wynn Ray

Hello hello.

I’m attempting email again, this tool called newsletter. Mainly, this is because email is a tool people are more familiar with than RSS. Many people don’t know how to follow a blog (and don’t have a desire to do so), while they do know how to subscribe to an email newsletter (and do have a desire to do so).

So, here we are.

Internal workings and such.

We’ll soon get to the part about what I’ve been doing creation-wise in the past several months. But first and foremost, creation in any shape or form is an “internal” endeavor despite its “external” manifestation. (“Internal” and “external” are in quotes because there exists no such separation in reality.)

So, I’ve been doing a lot of internal reflections. Specifically, this round of reflections started with the burning question: Why can’t I sustain what I already have?

The short answer to that question was: Because I don’t feel worthy.

This unworthiness need not be anything dramatic or showy. Nay, if it had been that obvious, I wouldn’t have needed to ask the burning question in the first place. My kind of unworthiness was a lot more cunning and sly. It hid underneath layers of pretend self-love.

I mean, yeah, I already knew that’s how undesired (and nevertheless accepted) inspirations take root inside a person, and even so, it somehow surprises me every time that those inspirations did take root and were thriving “unbeknownst to me.” It really is amusing after the initial wave of frustration. And eventually, there does come that sense of gratitude: Holy shit, I’ve been hating myself in such a passive-aggressive way? Thank you for telling me, me. (This is me talking to myself.)

This process happens not in a blaming, accusing way—blame and accusation are never useful. Any random stranger with a scalpel in their hand can dissect me on a surgery table. But no, when it’s me-on-me, I treat myself (at least try to) with more fundamental love, because the reason the undesired inspiration prospered inside me to begin with was that there was a lack of that fundamental love.

Lack of trust in the world (its humans, nature, machines, weather, time, and place) signals a lack of trust in the self. Sure, sometimes I willingly choose not to trust certain elements of the world, because contrast with such elements will allow me to feel trust toward other elements. The illusion of separateness is delicious; it is a flavor that I don’t want to abandon. You could say I trust myself not to feel trust for some elements. But when I cannot trust elements that I claim to love—then I know that there is a lack of trust in myself.

So I worked on that these past several months.

The world cooperates with me. The world provides more than enough for me. Not in some external “show me the proof” way—because I don’t need “external” proof. I know what is when I say it is.

I find this knowing quite pleasant and useful. Perhaps you agree with me; perhaps, if you haven’t experienced the pleasantness and usefulness, you’d like to try adopting this worldview.


Now to what I’ve actually been DOING in the past several months.

Doing never trumps knowing, but do I did, for I know. (Sometimes. When I don’t forget.)

Audio production.

As discussed in the blog post prior to the long break, the main practical purpose of the break was to focus on audiobook generation. And thus, five more audiobooks were born.

  • Skippable Kitties and Those That Aren’t

  • Moonlight Through the Manhole

  • Milk

  • Baby Blue

  • Watermelon Love Song

In addition to the traditional audiobook format, trying ElevenReader has been a lot of fun. Those voices can read so well already, I think in a couple of years the audio“book” format might become obsolete unless the audiobook is read by an artisan human narrator or the user has strong loyalty toward an established audiobook platform. Most people would just buy ebooks without DRM and know how to upload such ebooks to an app like ElevenReader.

Anyway, at the time of this writing, ElevenReader’s user pool is small. Because of that, there also don’t seem to be that many books on the platform yet. (Compared to Amazon’s millions, say.) Therefore, there has been some organic discoverability. For example, Replaceables has gotten more listens and ratings than I’ve ever received without lifting a finger. That was quite enjoyable. And then…

Look at this! They even put me on a banner! I didn’t have to do anything to get it!

Korean Voice QC.

I’ve also been participating as a QCer in ElevenLabs’ endeavor to create nice Korean voices. I really very much want to use such voices for my own Korean audiobooks, so it’s been particularly fun to work on the QC process. This project is still ongoing.

Making a new pen name was the right decision.

This pen name, Wynn Ray, its birth—it was the right decision. While I was generating the audiobooks, I realized (more acutely than before) that I am not the person who wrote those stories. The state I was in when I wrote them—that state will probably never return. I like what I wrote and I will never be that writer again.

Another pleasant find was that: No matter the shortcomings of my older writings, I have always written what I perceive as the truth.

This, I am quite proud of. More than any grammatically correct, structurally precise fiction, I think I will always be more proud of this.

🎻 For Her Ears Only 🎻 translation.

It’s progressing steadily. I wish I could use more technology for translation, but with the LLMs hallucinating so much and machine translation being so robotic, it’s still faster for me to just translate “from scratch.” Hence why the progress is steady but slow.

“From scratch” is in quotes because I do use LLMs extensively as an advanced dictionary. I’ve always hated having to see so many ads on dictionary/thesaurus websites. Now I have a clean work interface.

🍣 Log Me Tender 🍣 new words.

This is progressing even more slowly, but nevertheless also steadily. It’s actually quite enjoyable that, unlike several years ago, I don’t feel “not enough” when I am not writing daily or close to daily. I am doing SO MUCH. More than enough.

This goes back to the “internal” findings. The reason I couldn’t sustain what I already had was that, despite having that, I (perceived that I) wasn’t enough.

Now I’m gradually, more solidly, and more consciously moving in the other direction. I actually… I actually am enough? Haha. Like… just because?

Again, something that you might agree with, in your life. If not, maybe you’d like to try this worldview. Imagine just being enough because you’re you! The relief is gonna be tremendous!

I used to think that the phrase “I am enough” is so cheesy, mainly because I’ve witnessed people claiming that statement at the world. Like, they were yelling at the world to please accept that they were enough.

But no. No no no. What I’ve been working on is the opposite of yelling at the world, because the world doesn’t matter, because it is me, therefore it matters only to the degree to which I see myself as who I am. Again, there is no such thing as internal and external in reality.

On the use of emoji for project distinction.

🎻 For Her Ears Only 🎻 and 🍣 Log Me Tender 🍣.

This is how I label these projects in Notion hehehe. For Her Ears Only has lots of music in it. And yup, it looks like Log Me Tender will have a lot of sushi in it. Why? I have no idea. It is what it is.


What do you think about this new format of emails? It’s longer than my previous emails, and definitely much longer than my blog posts.

I’m kinda liking it. For now, I will stick to emails instead of blog posts and see how I feel about the setup. Not sure if I will include images every time. But isn’t technology amazing? Nightcafe is so much fun.

I can’t wait to be all the things that I can be in my lifetime by using what’s available to me, including technology.

See, “To live a thousand lives” was my motto a few years ago. It’s still my motto I guess, but less consciously so. Turns out, once a person has marinated in an inspiration for long enough, it doesn’t matter that said inspiration isn’t conscious any longer.

Anyway, back then, it felt like I could live zero lives despite having the motto of living a thousand lives. Now I hope I am remembering myself better. From short periods in my life in which I did remember: I know that the world inevitably reflects what I desire. Without trying. That’s the best part. Lives unfold on their own, as intended.

May yours unfold too, as intended,
Wynn.

You just read issue #1 of Wynn Ray. You can also browse the full archives of this newsletter.

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