My existential writing crisis
That which I thought would take the pressure off, turned it up instead
(This is an audio version of this letter, recorded by me, imperfectly and without editing. I hope you enjoy listening.)
Hello, I’m Philippine and to be honest, I feel like a beginner at life – I am forever trying to make sense of it. You can find my attempts at this, plus reflections, musings and experiences right here, in my newsletter. Subscribing is free! For everyone who feels like a beginner at life, and wants to connect in some way.
Something needs to change. I want to keep writing these letters, but I am struggling to do so increasingly, it seems. I worry that what I write isn’t interesting or valuable for others. I think that my writing isn’t good enough. That it’s just meh and there’s no point. And yet here I am again, writing.
Writing is hard. It’s not like one of those hobbies I see some people have, where not doing it is much harder for them than doing it. I need to either push or trick myself over the threshold to start, and then again and again – sometimes as often as every minute – to keep going.
It’s easy to wonder why I still do it. Certainly not for some other benefit such as money or convenience. Surely I write then because I like writing, but I’m not positive I have been liking it. This really confuses me, and I don’t quite have the answer.
I once heard a quote that said something along the lines of ‘I don’t like to write, I like to have written’. That does resonate, but how sad is that? I don’t want to do something just for the fleeting feeling you get afterwards, I want to do something for the sake of doing it, because I enjoy the process, because it feels right, or like me being my most me. Perhaps that is it. It does feel ‘me’ to write. But I think I may have lost that sensation a little, or a lot.
Yes, even something that is inherently meaningful and enjoyable for us can (or must?) have some threshold of friction to start – think of how this is the opposite with things such as watching telly or looking on your phone, where there is so little friction that before you know it you suddenly find yourself on your phone, saving videos to watch later (as if I’ll ever get to that ‘later’, but that’s beside the point).
However, after moving through this friction, at least a large part of the time this activity that brings us joy or fulfilment should feel good, shouldn’t it? Because it’s fun, because we get into a flow state or something along those lines.
I think that, ironically, the way in which I was trying to take the pressure off when I started this newsletter, led me to this point at which the pressure has actually been turned up and the pleasure down. I’ll explain.
I had anticipated precisely what has indeed happened: a hyperfocus on the quality and worth of my writing (or rather thinking that these were hardly existent at all), inhibiting me to write freely and enjoy it. I thought that I could prevent this from happening by telling myself that the quality didn’t matter, that for now it was merely about simply doing it – writing and posting, that’s all.
To make sure I did indeed write and post, to make sure that I got myself over the hump of the threshold every time, I removed a large part of the friction. I set a timer to write for just five minutes. After that I was allowed to stop. This made it easier to start. Sometimes I kept going for longer, sometimes I didn’t, but I wrote for at least five minutes often enough to be able to post regularly.
I think a few things happened here. Firstly, although telling myself that it was okay if I stopped after five minutes did make it easier to begin, it also made it harder to keep going. When the timer went off it told my brain ‘good job, enough, you can stop now, well done’. And my brain in turn established this as the norm, setting itself up to concentrate for those five minutes, no longer. What I mean to say is that I find it hard to keep writing when I’ve mentally prepared to stop at that point.
Secondly, this approach that was meant to get me over the hump also emphasised that there even was a hurdle to start with. It made me focus on the effort, and it increasingly made it feel like a demand, merely something that I needed to push myself to do. It became almost an exercise in discipline, a task to complete, that I could tick off after those five minutes were up.
And so the fun slowly leaked out of it, and with it some of the quality of my writing too, leaving me merely with the task I set myself of writing and posting. Perhaps no wonder then that this has started to feel more and more like an empty shell of an activity – just going through the motions.
This has redirected my focus towards that emptiness, making me question the quality of my writing (which in turn actually makes it worse) and wonder whether there’s even any reason to keep going, when it feels neither fun nor valuable.
And yet I know somewhere deep down that quitting is not the answer. I know that writing is my way of making sense of the world and myself. I don’t know if what I write is or will one day be meaningful to others, I don’t know if my readership will grow, if I’ll earn money from it at some point. But I do know I need to keep writing, even if – just like loving someone deeply – I don’t quite know why.
I need to experiment to try and find a new kind of relationship with it. Perhaps writing just for myself (at least during the first draft), as if I’m journaling – that is when I get into a flow much more easily. Maybe sitting down to write when I’ve got an idea instead of merely jotting it down as a reminder, riding the wave of inspiration. Aiming to fail, writing purely for fun, like playing as a child. Or do I need to release all pressure, not only for it to be any good, but also for me to enjoy it?
All I know is that I need and want to keep going, that for whatever reason it is meaningful to me. Nevertheless, that doesn’t mean I can expect to experience that feeling of meaning every time I’m writing. As my autism coach made me see, you can do a meaningful activity without experiencing it as meaningful in that very moment, and that’s okay.
Expressing these tangled up feelings and thoughts and sharing them with you is rather helpful already. I’m curious to see how things go from here, and even though I have no idea what it will look like, I know I just need to trust it – a very hard thing to do if you feel highly uncomfortable with any kind of uncertainty, like me, but I’m going to try.
I’d love to know, have you ever experienced anything like this, and if so, how did you deal with it?
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Too much meh and too little motivation
I have never done this before, starting to write a post without a clue as to what it would be about, but here we go. At this very moment I simply don’t feel capable of writing about a predetermined topic, even if ‘pre’ means just seconds before starting to type. So here I am.
Philippine, I totally hear you. Personally I only post twice a month, which takes the pressure off posting super regularly. I also tend to stop and write posts as and when ideas come to me. Sometimes this is in full, and other times it's just creating a draft with a heading I thought of. I hope that helps - there's a lot more I could say, but the biggest thing is, *are you writing what you enjoy?* Also don't be afraid to make it work for you. It's good to switch things up every now and then.
All I can say is, you're not alone. I've been there too and some days this is totally me. Some days I think it's not worth it, some days I think it's the only thing worth living for. Keep going. I can't say it gets better because I still get big ups and downs 🤷♀️ but some things that have helped for me: creating a writing habit (kind of like you, even just writing for 5 minutes every day) and getting feedback, for example by joining a writers group.