I would like to reconnect with writing again.
I woke up with this thought today, and the earnestness of it made it impossible to ignore.
You all know, if you read this post, that I lost my way with creativity at some point. When every creative act was tainted by anxiety and internal pressure for it to be “good” or “share-worthy,” when I began to care much more about the outcome than about the act itself, I knew I’d lost touch with the kind of creativity that I’d always found healing and truth in.
I stepped away from any kind of structured writing for a while, unsure if I would ever return to it. In the meantime, I journaled plenty, and that felt like something of a homecoming. I also picked up my guitar again and allowed myself to really and truly play. To use it as not a measure of my skills and worth but as a vessel for processing my feelings. To aim not to perfectly follow a set of instructions, but to find freedom and joy in making something out of nothing in a way that only I can. It was liberating, and I felt something begin to flutter awake in my soul.
And so, I’ve been toying with the idea of a daily writing practice. At first I considered a daily journaling practice, but the truth is, I miss writing for an audience, whether real or imaginary. I miss choosing words with a meticulous love and care and letting them show me new truths that I hadn’t even grasped until I see them laid out in white and black before me.
A daily writing practice feels right.
What doesn’t feel right is setting an expectation of posting every single day. I know that some days the writing will just not flow, that perhaps I will sit and stare at an empty screen for 10 minutes before I throw in the towel and choose a different creative activity for the day, or just try again tomorrow. I know some writings will be deeply personal, and others will be so nonsensical and stream-of-consciousness that there will be little to glean from them for anyone reading on the other side. I don’t want to be too precious with this, and I don’t want it to be perfect. Most of all, I don’t want this to become another to-do or something to force.
Maybe it can be as simple as just setting the intention to sit at my computer and just let out some thoughts, as often as is possible. Maybe it’s for fifteen minutes, or thirty, or an hour – I don’t think it matters. What’s important is that I am breathing myself alive again, that I am letting my mind expand and wander as I find the words to go with everything I am feeling. Maybe I’ll choose to share some things here that are more raw, more honest and personal than anything I’ve ever shared. Maybe I’ll write about things that are totally different from anything I’ve written about before.
I am looking at this first and foremost as an experiment in reconnection. With writing and creativity, but perhaps most of all, with me.
I’ve mentioned before that I feel as though I have been growing and changing at such a pace that I often realize I’m quite different from who I was two years ago. Not unrecognizable, but palpably different, nonetheless. At first, I resisted this change, wanting more than anything to return to who I knew. It’s a strange feeling, to suddenly feel so totally unmoored. When decisions that used to come easily now don’t feel right at all. When I say words that I know once felt correct to me but now make me feel that I am playing a role. When things that I used to consider inimitable facts of life began to transform and shape-shift in front of my eyes.
Through it all, a most uncomfortable realization. I really don’t know anything, do I?
What happens when a precocious wise-beyond-her-years child is suddenly thrown into adulthood?
All those things she thought she knew for absolute certain begin to unravel before her eyes. It is not that she realizes she had it all wrong, but simply that she was seeing just one tiny section of the whole puzzle when she had been fully certain that she had completed the whole picture.
In her new/old song from the re-released album Red called “Nothing New,” Taylor Swift writes, “How can a person know everything at 18 and nothing at 22?”
When I say I feel that line in the depths of my soul….
I may be 23, but the point still stands. I often feel I know so much less than I did when I was younger, but a part of me knows this isn’t quite true. The more likely story is that I actually know MORE now at 23 than I did at 18, which means I can more plainly see all the things I DON’T know.
In any case, it’s an uncomfortable feeling.
And how does one move through the beginning stages of adulthood while feeling like they don’t know anything?
I don’t know, yet, but I think I can try writing. Maybe that could be a start.
Why? Because it’s what’s saved me countless times throughout my life. It’s how I both make sense of my present and create a clearer picture of my future. It’s how I figure out what I actually am really truly thinking and what are maybe remnants of old truths that I am still painstakingly holding onto because it’s infinitely more comfortable than letting go of all pretenses and admitting that I simply DON’T KNOW.
So this is a new journey, a new experiment. I will not share here every day, but I will endeavor to write every day. I don’t really intend on being too fancy with the posts I do share; they won’t be hyper-edited or censored or adorned with pictures and keywords.
They’re just going to be my truth for that day. That is my promise.
I am curious to see where this adventure takes me. If anything, my one hope is that it brings me closer to me. To my truth right now, when I take away all the unnecessary fluff.
We’ll see how this goes. In any case, I’d love to have you along for the ride.
Love,
Nicole
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