Dear Self,

Writing. The only way to write is to do it, yet you fall short on that end of the stick. I’ve noticed you haven’t been as passionate about the writing you’ve been forcing yourself to put together. You force feed writing prompts instead of taking your time to knead the dough that is your brain. I can tell you haven’t given much thought or at least given yourself the chance to brainstorm more than twice in the same week. Your eyes go blank as your intense stare treads off into the empty space in front of you. Sometimes if I catch you in a moment of silence, I can hear your breathing slow as you swipe through the internal voices bombarding your brain; you once compared your thoughts to blind Tinder dates that have absolutely no intention of starting the night off right.

Can I ask you what you’ve been carrying on your shoulders lately?

Uncertainty? Frustration? Are you lost perhaps?

You catch angel numbers such as 11:11 or 10:10 that assure you that you’re still on the right path, but the ache of doubt in your chest and heaviness of fog on your brain accompanies you regardless of the aesthetics. What is your talent if writing no longer chooses you? Can you really call yourself a writer, or are you someone who just likes to write? You know how you could better develop your writing: reading and comprehending, writing consistent journal entries, time management. But you like the chaos, it fuels you but not necessarily your writing but sometimes creativity. You like the pressure and anxiety of knowing there are due dates coming closer than you realize.

You blame your writer's block on the lack of inspiration or drive to be creative, but you never look beyond what is surface level to your eyes and ears. Being creative versus living in your own creativity are two different lifestyles. Compare and contrast the people you meet along with the moments you share as you live throughout your daily life on this planet you share with billions of other humans and creatures. Keep your ears open for interesting conversations that you’ll hopefully get the chance to write down, you know your memory is trash. Do you lack inspiration, or do you lack the ability to call upon your surroundings for epiphanies.

These pages you struggle to fill with the slightest of originality. You want your work to speak at volumes others do not, but you’ve lost your voice throughout the journey of trying to fix your pitch and tone to match others. Do you find this competitive? Who can write the most visually descriptive but eloquently spoken short story? Do you find writing becoming a chore? Like taking your pet dog for a walk after taking them for a walk every day for a month. You are lazy when it comes to consistency. Writing used to feel like therapy until you forced it to become your craft. Are you even sure you ever made this a hobby? Remember when you used to scribble chicken scratch on lined paper and mom took that as, “My baby’s gonna be a writer,”. Who are you trying to reach through your writing? What type of audience? Who do you visualize reading your stories? You know your mom wouldn’t understand your outlandish perspective, so you write content echoed for young adult communities. What is the purpose, where is the credibility behind the words you type on each line? You love to incorporate your own life experience and live vicariously through your character(s). This must all be fiction unless otherwise specified.

You sit for hours rattlesnake brained, hands at the ready on the keyboard. Thumbs hovered above the spacebar and your other fingers hovered randomly over selected letters. Your eyes are bloodshot while your natural reddening around-the-eye from exhaustion highlights your reality. First, you’ll type the first sentence that comes to mind. You’ll ponder the next line for a few seconds until you give up on thinking and either press Backspace or hit Enter twice to try again. You chew the skin on the inside of your mouth as you bounce around words that could start, continue, or finish the sentence you’re stuck on. You scroll down to see how much white space you have left, you’re disappointed with how much time has passed and how low your word count is. This is a fun little game you like to challenge yourself with; will you be able to finesse over a thousand words tonight or will you push the due date into the next day. The future end goal is likely to develop the skill to write pages upon pages of sentences that amount to long-winded scripts, playwrights, or novels. Is writing your passion enough to fulfill the potential expectations of a full-time thought coordinator?

If there is one thing you know it’s that writing is your form of therapy as well as speaking aloud into the empty, full, or present space you’re in. You used to shun your voice from dragging on for too long from the repetitive consciousness of you yourself speaking. Writing is secure. It can state a time, place, and purpose all while being read live and can be referred to for future reference. Your words have meaning on these pages. Your voice is your thoughts, thoughts are universal messages that only speak aloud when given permission from their thought provoker. The way you form these words on this page, the words you choose to be read, the punctuation! All influence the readers and listeners to think with you, not against. Writing is not one-size-fits-all, there are too many varieties of humans with functioning brains to believe your writing is not worth reading, listening, or skimming through.