I Quit Writing for a Month
and this is what happened…
I lost 30 days.
I didn’t run more, or read more. I didn’t get more work done. I didn’t stop procrastinating. I started to exist in a fugue state because my thoughts were overwhelming, and I had nothing to do*.
I lost one-liners, and then I lost poems, and epiphanies (that would’ve made for really good essays) just slipped into the caverns of “forgotten”… We’ll never know these wisdoms that have been lost to the ages forever.
What I did learn, though, was this:
It’s interesting that amidst the day-to-day activities; the getting up, going to work, actual hustle and bustle of life, I felt lost.
I genuinely felt like I had nothing to do* even as I travelled, went hiking, explored a new island. As I rushed to finish presentations, going on my daily runs, grocery shopping — I simply felt unfinished.
The inexplicable urge to write was always there, hovering.
My mind kept reaching for that flash of inspiration I’d always taken for granted, for “normal”, and it was incredibly uncomfortable and disconcerting, when, instead of giving in and grabbing a pen or pencil, I had to just let it go.
I felt completely thrown off, torn asunder, and it was terrifying. My moods were constantly in a state of sad. I was mildly depressed, and on the verge of crying 90% of the time… The slightest thing would set me off.
Needless to say, I felt extremely fucked up.
I once wrote that writing is an urge, a calling.
I never realized how bone-deep I meant it.
I did this experiment, mostly because I was afraid I had “written myself into a corner”, if you will. I erroneously believed I was churning out sentences for the sake of it.
Filling up the content landfill of the internet.
I stopped writing because I thought I was doing it mindlessly. It started to feel robotic to me, as though I was merely going through the motions where “this word fits here”, “this structure will evoke this emotion”. An ABC equation that left me empty.
Yet, somehow, not writing, made me feel worse.
Turns out, writing is me figuring out my life, my day-to-day means of living. Turns out, without writing, I can survive… but I lost the will to hustle. To push. To really go for things.
Getting out of bed felt like an actual burden.
My head was full of tiny thoughts, crawling, like ants, swarming, until a whole tsunami of words filled, buzzing around, filling every crevice until all that’s seen is a haze of black. A fugue state of rote responses. Predetermined and pre-conditioned actions and reactions.
So, I quit writing for a month, and realized…
Sometimes, we make ourselves miserable on purpose. For no real reason, other than that we’re bored.
There’s probably some kitschy pop-psychology analysis about stuff like this floating out there, somewhere. Call it imposter syndrome, call it Occam’s Razor…
I have no answers for it. I have no reasons for why.
All I know is that I tried, and it felt like remembering a million, miserable, painful deaths.
In the end, all it confirmed was my suspicion that writers are born.
