I’ve never really thought of myself as a writer. I’ve always had aspirations to be a writer, and to one day be worthy of stepping into the label of that, but all I have are a few jotted down lines of ideas for a tv series that would probably fade into obscurity after one season. Most of what I wanted to write kind of died before I even gave them a chance to breathe. I think this is what writing everything out will help me do. Kind of freeing it so it gets a chance to bloom without being confined to the harsh scrutiny of my mind and the unfair ways in which I am unkind to myself. I also hope to stop seeing all my writing as being for anyone else and more for me. All the other things that may come with my writing come as consequences for making my writing for me. It’s like what I said to my friend about how we come to change spaces and make differences in the world. It usually happens because we are just trying to find a place for ourselves in it.
More recently, it’s started to feel like writing, or the aspiration of creating and using my writing to be a part of something bigger has become more and more tangible to me. And I think I have 3 and half reasons that triggered the decision to actually start spitting out shit on a word document.
Jake and Amir: Jake and Amir have a level of fame in a niche way, but they’re just a bunch of guys that want to make funny content, and have the confidence to do so. I was listening to a bunch of their old episodes, and they really weren’t always that great, but they just believed that they could write some things and do what they wanted with the ideas that they had. And here they are – and you see it in their newer episodes – doing something pretty good. I guess, for me, the reason why it became a reason to start writing was that they showed me how accessible it really is, and how short the distance between wanting to do something with writing and actually making that a tangible reality actually is. So thanks for that.
I watched the rom-com Set it Up today. I really enjoyed the subtle takes in different directions that the movie took when it approached certain rom-com tropes. The one thing that stood out was when Harper’s friend told her that her writing was going to be shit when it first started out, and for some reason, seeing it in a tangible form, and validated like that, as opposed to just continuously saying that in my head, really moved some of the inertia in me and said to me, ‘Fucking start writing and it’s okay that it’s shit’. I think in that way it slowly pushed me away from seeing and making writing a thing for others and more a thing for me. I’m actually a little bit excited. Strangely enough, that movie did a lot in making me realise how close I am to making what I want a reality. I finished the movie feeling like I am somehow a lot closer, and more directly in touch to where I want to be in the next few years. And yet, it was less being in closer proximity to the actual things themselves, but rather to the feelings that I would feel in those few years. I actually like that even more, because the amorphous feelings allow for more diverse ways for my reality to become tangible. Very exciting.
Writing, like my working out and my running, doesn’t have a seamless start. It requires the attuning and aligning of my body in a certain direction. And so it takes practice to be able to enter the language of writing, like it took practice to do that with running and working out, I think. Again, I knew this in my head a long time ago, but I think I needed help from the first two reasons to start. Like I needed a boost from the other reasons to reach that threshold to start writing. Thank you. I feel very blessed to have gotten that help. Practicing writing is about aligning myself in the direction of where I want to go, which actually moves me closer to where I want to be.
I don’t think that this is what I’m eventually going to do with my writing, but practice is a way of tapping into the space of writing, and so I’m hoping that writing this will help me write my essays and future projects with less fear, which I think is what makes writing so hard for myself. I’m very sure this will help.