My love/hate relationship with writing

Things I hate about writing:

Starting

Confronting

Feeling

Things I love about writing:

Everything I hate about it and more.

Writing has been the only way I know how to articulate or come close to being able to articulate my truest, deepest inner thoughts. Speaking isn’t my strong suit, the sound of my own voice triggers water to fall from my eyes when ANY emotion is being conveyed. It’s made my communication skills almost nonexistent.

I have attached a sense of shame to everything I decide to share about myself. I’m not able to explain the “why” behind what I want, need, or feel. I just feel it, and attach words to it in my head later on. That’s how I process. That’s how I communicate. It’s not ideal, I know, but I do feel that it’s given me the ability to be such a powerful writer. And that’s something I am confident in. I know if I can just have a little bit of time, I can make anyone understand me with words. (On paper of course.)

You can imagine it must be frustrating in my relationships when this is my preferred way to communicate. Now imagine how it must feel when I’m unable to process these emotions myself. The things I don’t want to talk about, or the things I’ve already talked about that still need some more diving in to, feel like a code I can’t crack. Usually journaling helps, but it doesn’t always do the trick. And what else do I have?

Not writing like this for so long made me lose confidence in trying to understand myself. I didn’t pick up my journal for a while because of this, and then I didn’t pick it up for even longer when I finally had the motivation because where was I even supposed to start when so much had happened?

Starting. Every writers least favorite part of the process. The flow of thought happens only AFTER the pen reaches the paper. Because once you get an idea, it can only stick in your head for so long before it’s gone again. Replaced by another thought. (Or is that just my brain thinking a million times per minute?) I think everyone’s a writer, and should explore that part of themselves because it unlocks such a deep understanding of yourself and how you view the world around you.

(Queue me writing in my journal January 1st of every single year “My New Year’s resolution is to write more”)

The truth is, sometimes I’m scared to write!! I’m scared of the emotions that will arise! I’m scared of somebody reading it, I’m scared of what my future kids will think of me when I’m dead and gone and the only thing they have left is my JOURNAL. Okay that last one was irrational but it is a true thought I’ve had. But all the scary things I never want to confront are the things that make me stronger and wiser. I’m always growing and changing my perspective. I could start writing about one side of an argument and convince myself otherwise by the end.

**Remember when we were learning to write argumentative essays and it came to the rebuttals paragraph?? Yeah…. that’s where I always got stuck. It almost always made me question if my side was even the “right” side. I’m gonna go ahead and conclude that it’s because I have a very open mind and that I believe everybody is right in a sense. But that’s a conversation for a different time.

I’ve been writing for a couple hours tonight, and just like my thinking brain, my writing brain also bounces from idea to idea, thought to thought. I’m writing in my journal, my notes app, in this rant, I’m honestly on a roll!

I used to take a creative writing class in highschool, the type of class most people I knew would take if they needed another English credit. But that wasn’t the case for me, it was my favorite part of the day. We started out every day by free writing for 10 minutes. The only requirement? You can’t stop. Every day I dreaded it, yet every day I wrote something I was usually proud of. Some days it was a poem, some days it was a scene from a book I had intended to write, some days it was “blah, blah, blah my brain is mush. I’m out of ideas. I want this to be over”. Starting the creative process is essential. Because then it turns into…. Something! Maybe even something good! Something helpful! Something shocking!

I joke about how much depth I had as a 16 year old girl, and how much of that I thought I lost because it wasn’t being documented on paper. I wrote about love, (for people, places, and inanimate things) I wrote about insecurities I observed in other people, I wrote about alternate realities, solutions to fake problems, what I learned about in other classes, and my hot takes on philosophical questions. Everything I wrote came from my soul, it was the only way I knew how to do it. I held nothing back, I was okay with being vulnerable because writing was my comfort. I couldn’t be misunderstood when the words were in front of people to read as many times as they needed. Writing is my proof of existence.

I shock myself every time I write, all of a sudden I’m my own therapist, coach, supporter, and best friend. It is so healing. So vulnerable, and so beautiful. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve written something down just to rant, complain, or word vomit and I either end up finding a solution, or making a realization before I get the chance to finish. It’s actually quite funny, you know how sometimes you just want to complain? You want to give yourself permission to just be angry for a minute? This happens to me a lot when I journal, I’ll be venting when all of a sudden there’s a voice in the back of my head that goes “well you probably feel like this because of this” or “well what if you saw the situation this way instead?”Total emotional whiplash.

Writing inspires me, reading inspires me, I inspire myself when I do these things, and it’s magical!

But do you know how I know I’m good at it? No, it’s not external validation. It’s because of the way I feel after. I’m more aligned with myself. Most things I’ve written have actually never been shared! The older I get, the more I question if I’m really “great” at anything. I thought maybe I was good at soccer, dancing, cooking, or designing things, and while I may be good that these things, they are things I doubted a lot. I’ve never doubted my ability to write great things.

Now don’t get confused, that doesn’t mean everything I wrote was…. Great. And of course, I’m allowed to be confident, but the reality is my writing evolves. This is where the hate part of this relationship comes in. I’m my own toughest critic. Reading through my old journal entries or writing projects make me question what I’ll think about my writing now, in 10 years. I will admit, sometimes it’s laughable. It makes me wonder if all writers and authors feel this way. Do they ever feel like their writing is perfect? Ready to publish? Ready to be shared with the world? Open to criticism? How could you?

And of course I’m naturally going to pivot from the original point of this entry and say that social media poisons the creative brain !!!!!! There are two ways to look at things. Inspiration, or comparison. And comparison is the most defeating feeling in the world. As long as you are comparing, there’s always going to be someone better, someone who did the unthinkable, someone who explained something better than you did, someone who executed an idea before you got the chance to. I can’t think of anything less motivating.

So yes, do I still love writing even if I sporadically and inconsistently pick up the pen every couple months?? Yep. And do I sometimes slam my journal shut feeling like I’m in a fight with myself? Also yes. But no matter the outcome or topic of my writing, do I feel relieved, free, and more aligned when it’s all said and done? You betchya!

So no, I’m not gonna put this entry into ChatGPT, or fix how many times I’ve changed my point of view, or not start my sentences with “And”, “But”, or “Because”. BECAUSE, my writing is mine and it’s perfectly imperfect, and the only thing that matters is that I took the time to write it.

<3

Bai