349-350: Why write?

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I have had trouble with daily writing ever since June. Back then I was backpacking in Asia and Oceania for a few months, and ever since I left I faced increasing troubles keeping up with the writing rhythm I had started building for myself 10 months prior. I think it was in Japan where I started to “give up” every other day or so, and I felt really guilty for doing it, which exposed my fear of not being accepted / being excluded if I did not keep up the writing rhythm I had committed to. This showed me that I had not made the commitment to write purely for myself but that a part of the decision had been fueled by the need to belong to a group and be recognized as someone “worthy” for the group.

I continued to write every other day or so, being preoccupied by whatever was going on while I was traveling and worn out by the constant instability of my environment. Before the journey I committed myself to use writing as a method of keeping myself stable regardless of my environment, and to that purpose I mainly utilized it, clearing myself out to survive my day-to-day. This experiment showed me the fact that if a being is lacking in basic needs (shelter, nutrition) there simply is no energy left for any kind of “self-development”.

Something changed when I came back home. I am not sure if it is me perceiving my environment to be stagnant (which it isn't – it just isn't changing from one extreme to the other in the matter of days or hours) or maybe the fact that the professional projects and self-development tasks that I'm working on are to be finished in long-term (I'm talking lifelong stuff here). Somehow it feels as if things are “going nowhere” even though they are; it's just so gradual that sometimes it's difficult for me to see the relevance. A part of this experience may also be true, because as I have explored some points in private writings, I see that I still expect things to just “happen” to me instead of me actively creating them and making them happen. So in ways I am stagnant, whereas in some ways I perceive myself to be stagnant.

It has been difficult for me to keep up the daily writing, and sometimes I have only written once or twice a week. I have seen the results in my living. I am confused with myself, I am less structured, I don't know what I'm experiencing, I don't seem to be making any progress, I don't see much practical change. When I started with this project of writing about a year ago I was going through a crisis phase when I had A LOT to go through, many things to write about, many potential growth points opening up – and thus it also felt like I was achieving a lot through writing. Now that my life is not in a crisis (as I have learned how to prevent myself from messing up my life, lol) and things seem all smooth and fine, I am not as motivated to write, because I don't see the point. It's like I already believe myself to be “enlightened”, which I know to not be true, oh god no, lol. Because I am less bothered by my fuck-ups in my everyday life I don't really spot them unless I specifically attempt to do so.

And this is exactly why it would benefit me to go through the effort of writing every day, be it just a tweet, a short description of what I went through or an assignment in my DIP Lite course. What I struggle with here is self-criticism. Even now I have decided to not publish what I have been writing yesterday and today because I thought that the text was just not “good enough”. I have already written a little about my self-expectations concerning this blog (the length, structure and content of a blog post) and I know that these expectations limit me from 1) expressing my experience in writing as it is because I expect my self-expression to fit into a specific format, and 2) publishing the text because I fear that others will judge it for not being in a specific format.

Another thing is that I have created a resistance towards writing self-forgiveness. Whenever I write something and face the point where all I have left to do is SF, it's like I face a wall where writing myself out feels like a huge burden that I just can't be bothered to do. This is where I have made a structural pattern a burdensome “must”, when in fact the structure is there to support me to have clarity within and of myself. Whenever I do write (or speak) SF, I feel lighter afterwards, as if there'd been some kind of a release. I don't know if reminding myself of the “reward” during moments of resistance would help me through: they might as well just cause me to expect to feel relieved, ending up in disappointment of there was no relief after writing.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself, while traveling and being on a “holiday”, to create a pattern where I justified myself “slacking off”, “letting loose”, “taking it easy”, “relaxing”, “not worrying” and “resting” with the fact that I had worked so hard the preceding months.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to work myself towards exhaustion and burn-out, not realizing that as I “tipped the scale” to the other extreme it would eventually tip to the other extreme as well, and that I am NOW facing the consequences of how I worked a year ago – I am reaping what I sowed – as powerlessness, unwillingness, lack of motivation and self-centeredness (comfort-orientation as opposed to the discomfort I went through while working my ass off).

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that the consequences of my actions will follow me in long-term.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that I have already had enough rest (the polarities have balanced out), and that if I do not get myself moving I will stagnate within the belief that “I can't”.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to write for an “audience” to seek for acceptance instead of writing for myself to find self-acceptance.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to confuse public writing to be such where I seek for a response, not realizing that public writing can be an act of expressing and sharing myself that is valid in itself even without a response.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to believe and perceive that my self-expression is valid only if it gets a positive response, not realizing that self-expression (me standing within myself and moving myself within and as self-honesty) is valid in itself.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to seek for a validation for my self-expression because I have not been OK with “who I am” (who I see myself to be within the act of self-expression) – because I have judged myself.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself, as I have not wanted to face myself in self-honesty and accept who I am now as the reality that is, to seek for validation for who I have presented myself to be in public writings, feeling “energized” upon receiving validation and feeling confused and frustrated upon not receiving validation.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to use the amount of comments and +1's to validate the “me” I present within a blog post.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not write about things that I fear admitting to, not realizing that it is those points exactly that I should be writing about.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to judge and deny what I see of myself and thus refuse to write about it, admit to it, accept it, stand as who I am now and share what I have seen and learned.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that in order to forgive myself (release) I first need to apologize to myself (expose).

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that if I am scared to talk publicly about a point, I shouldn't push myself to do so, as this is a sign that I have not really apologized to myself (exposed myself, admitted to who I am, stood within my flaws), forgiven myself (self-acceptance, release) nor made a commitment (decision to move).

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to give up on writing on days when and as I have believed and perceived myself to have been “too tired” or “too busy”.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not plan my schedule to include daily writing and to thus already decide in the morning (or even days before!) that I am not going to write, thus in the evening giving myself excuses such as “I'm too tired to write now” or “I don't have time for this now” to feel as if my planned laziness was justified.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that instead of allowing my avoidance to end up with the same outcome every day I can prevent this by planning my days in such a way that leaves room for writing.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to compare my writings to my previous writings – or more specifically, to writings that I have received positive feedback from AND felt satisfied with myself – and thus make my current writings appear “less” in comparison to these older writings and judge myself for not reaching my standard.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that I have created the standard of a “good text” based on the experience that I had while/after writing it and the impact it had on my life, and not on the structure, length or coherence of the text itself.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to seek for the experience of release and relief whenever I write, not realizing that epiphanies don't just happen every day but need to be built through consistent work, and that even then they might never again feel as “overwhelming” as some of the realizations I have had while writing.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to long for the feeling of having a big realization/release because I am not at ease within every moment of my living. (All the more reasons to keep on writing, then.)

I commit myself to write every day.

I commit myself to publish even a little bit of what I have written during the day, be it a short summary on my blog or a tweet on my twitter account.

I commit myself to plan my days in such a way that allows me to write, taking into consideration the writing circumstances (stability, peacefulness, time) and the writing methods (computer / pen and paper / video or voice logging).

I commit myself to explore and experiment with how to move myself when I stagnate, and I commit myself to write about moving myself through resistance.

I commit myself to utilize daily, weekly and monthly structuring to support myself to move myself.

I commit myself to embrace supportive routine and to explore how to make my current routines more functioning.

I commit myself to write for myself, writing from the starting point of “talking to a mirror” instead of “talking to a crowd”.

What helped me out when writing this was Joe's blog post, thanks for the support!