What is this place?
Is it where I put my polished essays, my best work, or is it where I just put my thoughts?
Dear reader,
I have been absent from this place for months. Maybe you didn't even notice. I hope you don't consider me less of a writer, considering I do that myself all the time.
I have been writing, not here, but in my personal diaries and documents. Sometimes I get excited by something and write with a burst of passion. And then I put on my editing hat and that passion is replaced by a critic. And soon I lose all motivation and optimism, feeling that the writing is not good enough. That what I'm trying to say is not what is coming across the page. That I need to print it and highlight the issues and edit the sentences and redo the structure and add in an anecdote and make it more funny or interesting or devastating or something. I realize that the text has steered away, paragraph after paragraph, from the original heading of the thing. Is this an essay or an article or a blog post or a newsletter? What even is the difference anymore? It's just words.
What I have put down on the page doesn't feel enough and I keep trying to make it something more. I try to hit a certain word count. I try to hit a feeling or an emotion I want you, my reader, to feel. Soon, I find myself lost. Soon, the writer has been replaced by the software engineer that needs to go write some code. Soon, I am someone else, a person unable to make you feel anything because I can't feel it myself. Feelings have no place in code. Algorithms. Syntax. Logic.
And so many drafts remain drafts, incomplete, waiting for the writer to show up again. The writer that is too busy questioning if he even is a writer. The writer that can't decide what this place is anymore. Is it where I put my best work or is it where I just put my thoughts? If the latter, then does the world really need another keyboard to add more noise to the Internet? If I add my thoughts, my words, to this place, is that constructive or destructive? Is it noise or signal? I don't know.
I don't really know what this place is and that is why I have been absent here. Maybe you can tell me.
Sincerely,
A Writer.