So back in the day (and by that I mean college, so not really that long ago depending on your perspective), I used to write a lot more. I practically blogged something every few days or so, even if it was only a few sentences; whatever happened to be on my mind at the moment. And it was fun… or at least, it felt worthwhile, even in those moments when I was upset and needed to vent somewhere.
And then, people started discovering my blog. Mostly through not-so-random chance—as in, I allowed it to be findable by hinting at its existence… until I finally caved and (quietly) linked to it on FB and that gravatar thing that certain sites like Wordpress use (it’s not there anymore, for the record.). And suddenly I had a readership of some sort, even though it wasn’t really much compared to other people I knew who were more open about blogging. But I was at least aware that some people read my posts sometimes.
Having a readership changed things, allbeit gradually at first. I started to censor myself more; post less frequently; focus on making longer, more substantial entries, until it started feeling like I was trying to write for some magazine or other publication (but still in my own personal style with the excessive parenthetical thoughts and technically improper dash usage as I just learned recently).
And then I started having trouble writing posts. It would take a minimum of 6+ hours for me to write something I was even half-satisfied with, which by working-life standards is 3/4ths of a standard workday already—which made me even less inclined to start because I’d start feeling overwhelmed about “wasting time,” especially considering how often I’d lose sleep from staying up late writing. I’d randomly start a post every so often and never finish it, or I’d finish and then just never publish it for whatever the reason, including my last post “on writing.” (which will never see the light of day as far as I’m concerned. I can’t stand my own writing sometimes.)
Now it’s just gotten to the point where I’m too self-conscious to even start writing about the things that have been on my mind these days.
The reality is, writing is hard. And not just in the I-suck-at-communicating-and-can-never-find-the-right-words sense, but in the sense that it’s difficult to put yourself out there when you know that you’ll likely be judged by your words to some extent by whoever is reading your blog at a given moment. It's almost nerve-wracking, even (especially when no one responds but you see your post’s stats went up and start wondering what that OSX Chrome user thought). And I know for a fact that I don’t take criticism or judgment all that well, especially when it comes to my own personal thoughts.
The point being, I have a lot of things on my mind that I’ve love to write more about on here, but have often stopped short out of fear of not being “blog-appropriate” or simply being unprepared to deal with whatever reactions people might have—because there’s a lot of things I just don’t talk about all that openly with most people. It’s hard because there is some sense to that: in this era of open internet and social media, whatever you share online can come back and bite you later when you least expect it, and there’s no way of taking back what others have seen. I don’t think I’m prepared to handle the scrutiny of “fifty pairs of eyes,” to intentionally misquote Virginia Woolf, let alone that of a single person (and that actually should be reversed to make the comparison accurate but whatever
.).
Aside from that, there's this quote from
this rather inspirational post on blogging I read the other day that sums up the experience of writing better than I could have:
"You know what writing really is? It’s about putting your completely incomplete and perfectly imperfect thoughts on paper. It’s about facing the stark reality that you’re not as smart as you thought yourself to be and that your beliefs about life (and everything within it) are not as clear as you had hoped them to be."
When I first started blogging, my intention was always rather simple: I wrote for myself. I wrote to keep track of my own thoughts, because I thought a lot, but most of the time only passively and in an aimless fashion to the point where I’d end up forgetting what was on my mind just a few minutes ago.
Of course, while that part of my motivation never really changed, I had to admit that once I became aware of my limited readership, it wasn’t only for me anymore. Part of me wanted to impress whoever it was that was reading at a given moment, almost as a way of saying: “Look at me! My thoughts are deep and insightful and you should pay attention to me!”
But the more I wrote, or tried to anyway, the more I realized this: my thoughts aren’t always all that. I can only say so much before I start repeating myself. And I will never impress everyone, nor is it even worth trying to, because my own concerns don’t always carry the same weight in other people’s eyes.
And that’s just the reality of it. I spend so much time, so many hours agonizing over finding the right words to say, for an entry that likely will just be glossed over within a few minutes by anyone who happens to come across this. It’s discouraging to realize sometimes (and ties into other thoughts I've had on loneliness, but that's for another day). But it reminds me that I shouldn’t be trying that hard to “impress” anyone with what I say anyway. I have other, more personal reasons for doing this, reasons ultimately that make this whole process worthwhile.
All that to say, I’m going to try to be a bit more open and a bit less cautious about what I really want to say when I write here (to the extent that there will probably be more long-form posts of this sort in the future). By not bothering to write out of fear, I’ve been hurting myself more in the long run. And I missed this.
It is now 5 AM, and I have officially screwed myself over for the rest of today. But oh well. To me, it’s been worth it (until I wake up later today and curse past me for not sleeping on this, anyway).
