I’ve Decided To Do What I Want.

I usually agonize over whether my writing is good enough, but I want to experiment.

I consider myself to be a writer… Kind of. I’m not as consistent as I want to be and constantly find myself writing repeatedly on my Instagram, rather than coming to the blank page and letting it all out there. I conclude there’s many reasons for that, one being Instagram’s partnerships with neuroscientists devoted to making me addicted to the app, another being the illusion of connection social media provides, that my subconscious secretly longs for, and the main barrier I believe… taking myself too damn seriously.

I think you need to take yourself seriously in order to succeed. But if you’re taking yourself so seriously you never act or produce work you approve of, maybe its time to step back and take some deep breaths. I’m at this point in my writing. I’ll have an idea and never flesh it out because I think, oh it needs to sound like this, and come off like this, and be cited in this way and that way and blah blah blah blah blah. Really its just fear. Fear of being judged and my work being ridiculed, being “not good enough”. But what the hell am I worried about my work being judged for? I do this for fun, not for funds. Hell, in my more than a year of publishing on Medium, I doubt I’ve made 50 dollars. But my obsession with how my work will be viewed has prevented me from sharing as much as I would like to. I’ve decided to change up my methodology when it comes to writing.

I’ve got some stuff that’s worth reading. It might not be the clearest, might not be the most well thought out, but it has character. Its interesting… In my opinion. And at the end of the day, when you’re creating for the practice of it, the craft of it, the enjoyment of it, your opinion is the only one that matters. Too many times we lose ourselves and our dedication to the craft in the pursuit of something. Money, adulation, respect from others, the list goes on and on. But when these desires start to distract and take away from your ability to produce, and have faith in what you produce, its time to take a step back and examine your intentions. Do you intend to be true to yourself or true to the image you want to create? Because there’s a large difference between self actualization and self-image actualization.

I want to self actualize, to have fun, to share my opinions and insights in a way that feels natural and light hearted to me. So I will no longer hold myself back out of fear of judgement. I will let my words flow onto the page as well as I can, read it over a couple of times, add what I feel needs to be added, and then publish. The idea every single thing I write needs to be some groundbreaking, eye opening, eureka inducing piece of work, is wrong. Its holding me back from the fun. The craft. The exploration of the wonderful world of writing, of thinking, of getting to know yourself. So I’m not doing it anymore. I will, as the homie so eloquently stated while playing pick up the other day, “Let that thang go!”