We all hit moments in life in which we feel like we’re reliving the same events on a loop with just a few variations.
Falling in love with flawed perfect men only for them to be in love with someone else or otherwise unavailable? Check. Just because the men change doesn’t mean your feelings do.
Learning to have a little hope even when life seems bleak and sucks? Check. Just because the circumstances that are causing the suckiness change doesn’t mean the formula to overcome the suckiness does.
Learning to keep developing new goals and not grow static in your career? Check and check. New goals and new followers and new projects and new paths, but for the same ultimate desires.
Sometimes, even if we’re constantly moving and progressing, our lives fall in loops. And something must break those loops.
I think part of the reason I haven’t written as much lately (for this blog, I mean) is because I felt like I’ve written everything already. Every problem I could go through, I’ve been through, and the rest have been repeats teaching me the same thing over and over.
At certain points this summer, I’d start writing something that I thought was new and halfway through I’d realize, Wait, didn’t I write this last year? or Hold on, this looks so similar to that one post.
And then I’d stop writing, feeling like there was nothing new to offer, as though the only newness came from a new example to back up an old thought, an old experience, an old lesson, an old theme.
And then of course, there’s that backlog of posts I promised I’d write (both to you and myself) constantly staring at me, simply overwhelming me. When those lists cross a certain length, at a certain point, you start to feel like you’re never going to put a dent in them.
And what’s new?
I love procrastinating, I’m excellent at it, and I somehow manage to always get through to the other side unscathed and I’m sure it’ll eventually be the same for this too. That I have yet to do get through unscathed means is I still have yet to reach that level of adrenaline that’ll give me the kick that I need to get through it and so I’m biding my time on that one.
Or maybe it’s that I’ve spent my summer managing to score new opportunities and yet feeling like I’ve already done this too?
What’s the opposite of impostor syndrome? I-deserve-the-world syndrome? I’m-effing-awesome syndrome? I-know-my-career-is-the-one-thing-I-can-always-rely-on syndrome?
The above are all the problems that I thought I had: everything being too easy, procrastination, lack of motivation, lack of inspiration, and being stuck in the same loops that seem to no longer have the same level of toxicity and anxiety they once did.
But yesterday, something clicked, I felt like writing a new song and it just happened. And I wondered why for quite some time. What changed? Why am I suddenly going to just write and write and write?
That’s exactly why!
Three memories came together and it just clicked.
- When I was younger, during my I-refuse-to-do-any-schoolwork years, the only piece of advice that actually motivated me to get it done was from my father, who didn’t bother wasting time asking me why I wouldn’t do the work, knowing that I could do the work: “I know you can do it, do just do it. Don’t think about it; just do it.”
- When I had yet another love life crisis right before last summer and I vented to my favorite professor, he told me: “Don’t think.” For an overthinker such as myself, it’s the best advice.
- When I told my YA Novels Workshop prof at Columbia this summer that I used to be able to write a chapter a week and I can’t anymore, she said, “Well, you write differently now.”
And that’s what happened. I write differently now.
I editorialize more.
Maybe it’s because of the endless hours of tutoring people for English and writing classes and SAT modules. Or maybe it’s because I spent several hours editing manuscripts and essays (and even messages to guys they like or want to break up with) for friends. Or because of the numerous writing workshops I’ve participated in.
Every time I pick up a book, including any of my own, my brain goes: “I would’ve written [X] differently.” Every text, every Wikipedia article, every Quora and Reddit post, every lesson in the SAT prep books I have to use for my job, and every email or letter I get from a professor or faculty from school, I find myself trying to find the mistakes instead of simply understanding.
I’m a naturally spontaneous person. The reason procrastination works for me is because when the adrenaline kicks in and I don’t have enough time to think, I do things more efficiently. And when I feel like I have all the time in the world to simply think about doing things, the doing part shuts down. Different side of the same coin.
The more I learned about editing and form and structure and all that, the less and less I wrote.
But no more.
I realized what was beautiful about my early blog posts is that I wrote in stream-of-consciousness in short sessions and just pushed stuff out without even bothering to read it a second time. I wrote a lot of things this way in fact. Which meant I wrote a lot. And I wrote pretty spectacularly. I need to turn the editing brain off while I write. I need to stop thinking about what to write and just… write. Now to give up editing all together would be stupid of course, but that can come later. Not just for this blog but for all my current projects. I’ve always been an abstract artist. Experimentation is what I thrive on.
So now… I’m just gonna write.
– Samhi C.
