Why I'm Writing (2022)

I wrote this three years ago, and while rereading it, I realized I still see myself in many of the things I wrote. I'm happy to share it with you and plan to write a follow-up post sometime soon!

Over the past few years I’ve regularly felt a strong drive to write and share things. However, when looking inward and investigating my intentions, I started to doubt that it was a good idea. One reason was that I could sense that there was a part of me in search for recognition - and I didn't like that as my motivation for writing. The second reason was that aside from this strong desire to write I just couldn’t find any other very good reason to do so.

Finally I ended up using the momentum from that walk at the lake with mum (see Reflecting on Change (2022)) and decided to just start and see how it would go (and feel). In this post I’m sharing some reflections about my experience during the weeks that followed:

I was amazed to find that the insights I wrote about in that first post continued to pop up in my mind at the right moments. For example, there were several moments where I could plainly experience how everything is in constant change and that every moment is sooo precious. On other occasions, the insight that suffering means that there are still things to learn and that the suffering points us to those things was so present in my mind that it appeared obvious. What made it even better, was that through these additional observations the insights got reinforced - which led to even more learnings. 

Why did the insights come up in those moments? On the one hand, writing helps me to process insights and structure my thoughts. By not just journaling for myself, but writing “for others", I automatically direct more effort towards good formulation, avoiding gaps in the argumentation and removing anything non-essential. All of this betters my understanding of whatever I am writing about. On the other hand, by continuing to go back to the same topic for several days in a row, insights can sink in deeper and are more likely to (at least temporarily) reprogram the mind and change my intuitive responses. 

The second thing I realized was how much I’m enjoying the writing process. I tend to do a lot of learning, structuring, analyzing and understanding, and it feels like the act of creating, of generating output, forms a healthy balance to those analytical activities.

In summary, I just discovered a whole new dimension of writing - an inward directed one: toward myself and for myself. And this feels very right!