Why I Write

It’s been about six months since I last wrote and while the break may have diminished my skills, it also gave me a startling realisation.

A lot of the reasons why I had initially stopped was because of my imposter syndrome.

I would often question myself:

Who am I to say all this?Why are you writing for... No one really cares Daniel.

And often times, I would cringe at my writing - thinking that I was on some morally righteous high horse trying to stroke my ego.

However during my hiatus, where I have avoided writing I have felt it extremely difficult to gain clarity.

My thoughts feel scattered, and even worse I feel generally unhappy letting other areas of my life be weighed down.

Since writing brought momentum and impetus, the absence from my life took that away.

What once was an environment for me to feel grounded was lost the moment I “gave up writing”.

So why do I write?

My writing is a depository of all my thoughts and more so, an overview of how these changing thoughts have aligned with my development as a person.

With how fast life is, it’s hard to deny that we’re all subject to forgetting a lot of what happens.

So, wouldn’t that be a shame, if you possessed no recollection of what you’ve gone through?

The same way we make the effort to take photos on a night out, we should also put time into keeping a record of our mental thoughts.

Our mind is ever changing and I think it’s important to have some sort measuring stick to use later down the track to reflect on our progress.

For me, daily journalling can be quite hard for me to maintain consistently. But when it comes to really pressing thoughts that just need to be synthesised or else, it’ll weigh everything else in my life down in m

Truth is, we write to synthesise our thoughts. To make the abstract, tangible.

When I write, I am translating all the thoughts, both bad and good, that have weighed on my mind into something I can hold onto. These words on the screen are my thoughts, and my thoughts only. They are mine.

It is this type of ownership that crystallises my identity and more importantly gives me that sense of clarity. These two ingredients are fundamental to me feeling steadfast and unwithered from any challenges in life. That no matter how much is on my mind, I have the freedom to write it all down.

And when you’re finished writing, there’s no better feeling than that cathartic sigh of relief. The kind that sets you free and ready to go farther.

Yourself, and yourself only.

When I first started gaining momentum with writing, I was really hooked onto publishing on Medium. There was this inflated idea of importance that I was in a space of the world’s best thinkers, writers, entrepreneurs and creatives alike. And while this feeling was great for settng my impetus, it was short-lived.

In the midst of it all, I started to realise that much of the reason behind my writing was fuelled by the ego stroke I’d get from seeing the metrics on Medium. The people who read it, how long they read my articles for, etc.

And even though these numbers weren’t all so impressive, I was so obsessed.

It got to a point where I was so obsessed with the earners program and spent hours researching how to maximise my earnings. The end result? A few dollars. Whether or not I was doing it correctly, the fact that I was spending countless hours just trying to make a few dollars just so I can say “writing is an additional source of income for me” just bewilders me.

It was here, I knew my original passion for writing became distorted.

Even right now, having discovered this new trend around “atomic essays” that has emerged on Twitter and seeing the community and virality, I am trying my best to stay grounded.

To write for myself, and myself only.

Until then, I want to master the craft and share to whoever is interested all in the right way.