The Platform Wide Crisis
Friends, colleagues, writers, poets, soul bloggers, and eloquent ramblers; There’s a crisis on our precious Medium. We seem to collectively have lost our Mojo. We have forgotten the way we used to make sweet love to words. Even if you were more the type to bend words over and pull their hair, it was still pretty sweet. I don’t see it on my feed anymore.
People just aren’t writing very much, or worse, taking breaks or disappearing all together. There is a strong sense of defeatism.
The moral of any Mojo story, is of course that it was inside you all along, you just lost touch with it for reasons. And I think we can all list the reasons, I’ve read lists of reasons. That obviously isn’t helping anyone reconnect to their Mojo.
I seemed to be suffering from a lack of Mojo myself. To try to recover it, I’ve started reading and sorting through old things I’ve written. In my case emails and messages — I have a non-fiction in mind that will need some work to be as authentic as can be and I’m not going to trust my memory on that. While doing so I rediscovered some things I wrote that surprised me.
Like this one from 2013:
I’ve been wondering how to say this…
I believe we identify everything by measuring it against something else, that we need the contrast to fully understand.
I believe that only love is able to create hate.
I think I have loved in my life and that love has ended badly sometimes, but I’ve never hated anyone and that includes myself. Which sort of makes me wonder how deeply I loved…
And then I measure it to this.
And I believe, were we ever to end, I could hate you.
Full disclosure; I did not get a response on this email. My man is a smart man. I also want to point out there was context behind that email, conversation about love in some way turning sour. So back when he got it, it didn’t read as vaguely disturbing as it does now.
At least, I sincerely hope so.
He didn’t run away screaming.
The best part is that all these things were not written to write. They were written to relay an idea or an emotion, but it was a long time before I convinced myself I could be a writer. It’s all raw, unpolished, my voice. Unguided Mojo. I think by the time I’ve gone through all the inboxes and outboxes I have, my Mojo and I will be thoroughly reacquainted.
I invite you to go through your own old writings. Any type of writings. See what gems you rediscover.
If you have found your own way of finding your Mojo, please share it with the rest of us.