After skipping out completely on day 91, it seemed necessary to make up for it by spending all of today writing. So I sat down with my laptop, opened it up, and loaded up a blank page.
The cursor blinked on and off. I stared at it.
Maybe I’ll watch a bit of TikTok first.
Now, I’ve set app timers with all of my social media apps, due to my addictive scrolling tendencies. The app gets paused once the timer runs out; however, the keystrokes (err, thumb strokes) to changing the timer and adding more time have become second nature to me by now. 5 more minutes. 10 more minutes. 5 more. 15 more.
All in all, I racked up over 3 hours of screen time on TikTok alone, and a further 45 on Instagram. An entire day wasted, all because I couldn’t decide what to write.
I finally returned back to the document and typed the words “brain dump.” What followed were several different bulleted lists, ranging from a to-do list for this week to what I think I should be doing with my life in upcoming years.
One of these lists was titled, “Things that fill my soul with deep and absolute joy.” It included things like snorkeling, baking bread, traveling, and gardening. Naturally, all things that cost money, rather than aligning with the whole “follow your passion and you’ll never have to work blah blah blah” thing.
It took me a while to realize that writing wasn’t on the list.
It finally hit me hours later: I don’t write because I love writing. Writing is not a thing I do for fun. It’s not something I enjoy.
I write because it’s who I am. It’s a part of me.
This 365 day writing project has been a struggle because I don’t actually enjoy doing it. It’s almost a sense of obligation. I mean, of course it’s an obligation in that I committed myself to doing it. I commit myself to a lot of things, though. Still learning about being realistic with what I can and cannot do before signing up for it.
It’s strange to realize, after all these years of identifying as a writer and believing that it was my highest form, my ultimate calling, that it’s not what I’m passionate about.
Maybe that’s ok.
