What writing does for me
Or the real reason for the Month of Blogging Rantily
When I was in high school, I had an English teacher, Mrs. Benson, who hated my writing. She refused to let me into AP English, having me settle for the school newspaper instead. (And we thought journalism was undervalued in the Internet age.)
My only A on a paper from her involved me writing an essay based entirely on Cliff’s Notes — something she threatened to flunk anyone for doing—because I had the flu and couldn’t finish all the books I needed to read in time. (I look at that as my first hacking moment, using the Cliff’s Notes to figure out where in the book I needed to pull quotes from to frame my thesis. The practice of using external resources to decompose code would get me through many nights of development.)
When I got to college, I discovered that Mrs. Benson’s dislike of my writing was just her dislike. I started photocopying and mailing her my A and B papers. Did it throughout college, until I finally got over her slights, but not until sending her my 27 page capstone paper, which my professor said “was one of the finest I’ve seen” while commending my meticulous research and my conversational prose.
The more I write, the better I get at writing. But that’s not why I did the month. It’s about working through spite.
I have had a lot of doubters — teachers, managers, even myself. I rise and fall on my victories and the defeats. Re-launch a university website with vastly improved engagement. Have the school leadership question my value to the organization. Have their bosses say I was the best web person on the campus and they’d be fools to drop me. Lead a design of a killer product feature that drives new sales like never before. Get swallowed up in a design project where I am under-resourced and my design decisions called into question every single day. Have a manager suggest, over and over, that I should find another field to work in, constantly referring to the Dunning-Kruger effect, even as my inbox piles up with endless thanks for my work in said field.
Writing is about me working through those doubts. Ironing out my mental wrinkles of spite through some very public talk therapy.
When I decided to leave my last job, I planned on taking at least a month off. And during that month, I wanted to write as much as possible. I looked to artists who’d do things outside of their chosen medium to try and renew their creativity in that medium. I hadn’t blogged much during my tenure in that job, mainly because the day-in day-out grind left me creatively drained when I got home.
The more I write, the more I know I made the right decision shifting towards user experience about five years ago. My writing has highlighted what I have done well, what I can do better, but most of all, that what drained me about work wasn’t the work but the circumstances.
Meanwhile, the spite wrinkles are being smoothed. And while I discover new things to make myself angry about my last work experience, on the whole I’m making peace with it every day. I don’t talk about that place with spite. I talk about it as a lost opportunity — lost because I could have done more, lost because the circumstances prevented me from doing more. But I also talk about it as a set of great achievements I was a part of.
And so, I keep writing. I keep taking ideas out of my head, putting them on the screen, turning them, rolling them, pressing them. I do it until I feel I understand, until it lays as smooth as a linen tablecloth on a dining table.
The added bonus, of course, is the creative part of my brain is more alive than it’s been in a long while. I want to go back to my vocation, not because I need money, but because it’s what I do best. It’s not love, but it is certainly more satisfying than it’s been.
The Month has been about waking creative part of me up. And now that it’s awake, it doesn’t ever want to go to sleep again.
