Writing atrophy
Writing

I’ve recently come to realize that I am very close to losing writing (and the creative process in general) to atrophy. Writing effectively has become increasingly difficult for me these days. I often catch myself reading, editing, re-reading, and re-writing passages of what I wrote to constantly measure the “flow” of the text, but ironically, the process of re-editing and injecting thoughts sporadically lends itself to producing disorganized material in the first place. I’m certain it’s the logical side of me interfering, panicking and fearing the loss of control and structure. The hands that translate the thoughts in my head are used to writing work emails or matching a curly brace in code–it’s been too long since I hardwired what I type to the creative hemisphere of my brain.

 

Back in grade school when personal blogs were all the rage, I felt motivated and always looked forward to writing a post about random, contrarian thoughts on Xanga. Nowadays, I get a mild sense of social anxiety when just thinking about bearing my controversial thoughts and my true self out for the entire internet to see. Anxiety issues aside, isn’t that natural to begin? It’s probably unfair to be comparing my younger and more reckless self to the carefully curated individual that I’m trying to be now, 10 odd years later.

 

As much as I want this blog to be technical, I also want it to be an insight of how I am at an individual level. Hopefully, one of these days I can look back at these posts as I’ve done before and measure my growth as a writer since then.