Writing for Yourself
The best reason to write.
In a few minutes, I am visiting a place I have always been uncomfortable visiting. A place that always made me nervous, raised a lot of questions and doubts in me. And still does!
Last week I told myself to live the lifestyle of a writer. That meant, being a writer wasn’t going to be just about writing things for other people to read and then publishing it. It wasn’t going to be about dreaming of a day when I receive literary accolades and then doing things with that inspiration.
It would also be about writing for myself.
And that would mean writing in notebooks, note apps, and wherever writeable, to address my thoughts which otherwise like to whir and then fly out of my reach like a housefly on a summer afternoon.
And so here I am writing these words, not to make an impression on a hypothetical reader but as a way to deal with the questions and doubts in my mind as I prepare to leave for that place.
I don’t have time to ask why that particular place does these things to me. I would need at least five hours to get into that. But writing these words, I feel I don’t need to go into those depths to make myself feel good. In fact, the process of writing these words has meant the fly is already out of here.
It is in times like this that writing seems magical. It is where I realize that writing to understand yourself isn’t always supposed to be about profound psychological analysis. It is merely supposed to be a way for you to converse with yourself without the disturbances of annoying flies. A good honest conversation with yourself. It doesn’t have to be about the subject that bothers you. IT JUST HAS TO BE A CONVERSATION. A conversation to stick it all together. A conversation to gain some control over yourself. A conversation to make you feel you are there with yourself. A conversation to make you forget everything else or align everything else to yourself. I don’t think profound psychological ventures are possible without all this, anyways!
With this kind of bond with myself, I am confident I will handle the place and it’s anxieties in my own (un)stylish way.
The fact that I am about to publish it now means the publishing process is just a bonus. The real reason for writing has been accomplished. The lifestyle of a writer has been lived!
