My Relationship with Writing
lifeI've always wanted to be a writer of some sort for as long as I can remember. In middle school, I was voted "Mostly likely to be the next author", while in high school I started off being heavily involved in the school newspaper. I was convinced that when it was time to pick a career, I would do something in this space, but I suppose life had other plans for me.
I had a lot of internalized feelings growing up, especially as someone in a very strict household. Feelings were weird, we didn't show a lot of it in my family growing up... but I had so, so many feelings and I didn't know how to deal with it. Then I found writing.
I wrote a lot in notebooks. I found that yelling into my journal IN ALL CAPS, in dark bold letters was cathartic. I wrote for myself, to figure out (or not) feelings, and that was enough for me.
Then the Internet happened (aka I finally had access to it). Blogging became a thing. Online journals became a thing. I remember thinking to myself: Are you saying I can journal online, people may read it, and it was ok to show feelings? Great, count me in!
Livejournal. Xanga. Blogspot. Blogger. Diaryland.
There were so many options, and I tried them all. I connected with so many people who helped me while I was drowning in my own teenage angst. I thought wow: I finally found my community. Decades later and surprisingly I'm still connected with some of those people.
Post-college, I wrote a lot about being in my (early) 20s. I enjoyed pop-culture posts and conversations, something completely different from my teenage angst years. I talked a lot about what I had dubbed my "quarter life crisis". I had fun with my writings, and even got a few of my (now former) friends to join in.
After that, I stopped. I stopped writing publicly, and even took a break from journaling in private. I posted a short post in 2016 to my now archived Wordpress saying I was going on a hiatus... and so I did, until picking it back up again 2023, but this time it was less words, more photos. Until now. This past 2 weeks, I've written more words than I've had in the past 6 years put together.
Writing used to fill me up. It used to be enough for me. I’m doing this challenge in hopes that it could be enough for me again. Whatever that really means.
At the end of the day, I just want to write. No specific reasons, or many reasons rolled up into one. That’s all.
Side Note(s):
- This post is Day 17 of the WeblogPoMo2024 challenge.
- This post is a somewhat answer to Robert’s prompt of Why Write?
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