After 6 weeks of hiatus, I am back. I do not know where the last 6 weeks went. I had no energy. I was tired. I could not sleep well. I had no motivation. At least I cooked and ate.
I have also been pondering the purpose of my writing. I read everybody’s comments in my last post. Many of them were encouraging, and helped me regain perspective. I am touched that my written words can be a source of inspiration for those who find me. Some comments probed my thoughts. Direct and honest, my readers challenged me to understand my motivations for writing, and to look into my soul. Was it external validation? Perfectionism?
A mid-blog crisis is an opportunity for some soul searching and introspection. There were a myriad of thoughts swirling through my head. Most of them jumbled up. I could not see my present moment with clarity. The future was hidden in the mist.
My energy dwindled in the last month of so as I thought about why I wrote. Then one day, I realized, it was because of the very fact that I was not writing. I was not writing my journal, my dreams, my thoughts, my blog. Writing lies at the crux of my creativity and yet I let the passion extinguish itself by self-doubt.
So why do I write? Because I love writing. Simple.
When I write my blog, it’s for me, first and foremost. It has to be; otherwise there would be no spirit in my writing, no sincerity.
If I were writing for a magazine or another website, then I would gear my writing towards that audience. But for my own blog, there is no need to tailor-make posts, for I am not teaching anyone anything. I am exposing my inner world for others to share my experience. I do not have a goal that I must inspire X number of people, or that there must be 3 takeaways from each article I write. What people gain as insights or inspiration depends on their contexts, their environments, their histories, their personalities…. And all this is out of my control.
Everyone has a story unparalleled to others.
I hope to inspire, impact, and influence – but with no set formula. For now, I write. For myself. Because it makes me feel alive.
Thank you for being here with me.
和你聊感觉很棒！加油走出来，每天和朋友多笑一点点！笑容很美的！
哈哈谢谢Coco ：）
Glad you got that straightened out. It’s pretty obvious by your writing that these weeks of hiatus brought you much clarity. It’s delightful to read and to see.
Funnily (to me), it took me a while to start my own writing projects. I had the idea of starting a blog in October 2013 but I kept postponing because I was afraid. Then in February I’ve decided to create Daily Cuckoo and I’ve spent 2 months working on having the “perfect” design so that no one could have complaints about it. Then I’ve launched it. I only had 1 person asking for a question since the launch… (which is how the site should run, people ask I answer).
So I finally started the blog where I could write when I wanted and what I wanted, for myself. I designed it in 1 week, there’s no about page, no archive. Just the articles. But only 2 articles in, I’ve started to struggling writing the next ones. Luckily when I’m stuck I always use some sentence completion exercises (personal trademark of Nathaniel Branden) and I’ve quickly realized that I’ve switched the focus from writing for myself, expressing myself in a way that could help others, to writing to get popularity and make a living out of it.
The thing is I want to make a living out of it. I want to spend my whole time reading and writing and climbing rocks around the world. But as long as I linked that to my primary target, I couldn’t write, my writing was empty, was too “polished”, it was not interesting. Only when I’ve focused back on writing what I wanted to say and when I wanted to say it, just because of me, then I was able to come up with something good. So, like you, just writing for myself. All the rest will come up by themselves. Maybe. Or Maybe not.
I feel tired writing now so I’m not sure I am clear and I am not sure you see the correlation between your story and mine, or at least what I am trying to express. Sorry if this is confusing.
A last word though. I have a young beautiful classmate that was diagnosed with leukaemia a couple of weeks ago. And it made me wonder what would I do if I learned tomorrow that I only had 6 months to live. The answer was very easy and straightforward: I would go tell the people I love how much they mean to me, and I would read, write, and climb rocks. That question brought much clarity to what I would do and why I would do it. It’s all very personal.
Hi Guill
Indeed very personal, and it must work for us. If you want to write to make a living, then strategies are also different. I think as long as we are clear why we are doing something, then it’s fine. Sometimes we need some reorienting as environment, and as we, change.
Good luck with your writing and creativity pursuance!
Noch Noch
I am just glad you do. I don’t check in very often and after a depression bout of my own 2 years ago, I started throwing everything out that related to the depression, my notes to myself and to my therapist, etc. Any electronic files on the topic and the link to your website. Then one day when I needed you again, I searched and searched. I could not find you. I could not remember the spelling of your website. All I remembered was it had something to do with knock knock. Several weeks later, I was typing something into a url that began with the same first few letters and your website popped up in the suggestions. I saved it as a favorite and now I can come back to it once in a while. One of my favorite things on your site is that beautiful picture of you on the my story page. I guess it brings me some sense of peace to see that when I am depressed there is still beauty in people even if I am having a hard time enjoying it.
Thanks Laura, good to hear from you again. I’m happy to know that I can provide some sort of inspiration from afar
Lots of love
Noch Noch