6 Surprising Things That Happened When I Stopped Writing Altogether

Some were good, some were bad. All were insightful.

Almost exactly one year ago I stopped writing.

I had been experimenting with writing every day for a while, and then with not writing every day, but still publishing semi-regularly.

Surprisingly, I didn’t see much impact from decreasing the amount I was writing on Medium, which was pretty neat.

However, it is, of course, a very different beast to stop writing every day and to stop writing altogether. But that’s what I did.

Life started coming at me faster than ever, and Medium and every other writing project I had hopes for were put on the back burner (and then in the back closet, and then in the back corner of the storage unit 50 miles away, metaphorically speaking).

Now, things are better. I feel the best I’ve felt all year, and the urge to write is coming back stronger than ever. As I begin to consider how much and what I want to write as I get back into it, I’ve had some time to reflect.

So, in the spirit of the new year and the almost-anniversary of when I stopped publishing on Medium in 2021, I wanted to share a few things I noticed when I stopped writing.