I wanted to quit writing several times this year. It came down to the amount of time I spent writing as opposed to spending time with my partner. It felt like I was always working when she wanted to hang out. I structured it as a choice between her and the words. She wins. She will always win. However, she made it clear that it is not a competition. It isn’t even a choice between her and the words. It is a matter of how I use my time and where I find my joy in and outside of writing.
Over the past few years I’ve watched a lot of static behavior and, imho, slow decay. I’ve watched my kids peak and reach a state where they do what they need to do–do what is required of them at the very minimal level–and then slide into a video game or a tiktok death scroll or a youtube video or some systemic combination or routine of all three. I wasn’t raised like that and I really want to believe they weren’t either. There is a time and place for that kind of consumption, but when it becomes the focus of your life it creates a depression around you–one that I am very easily sucked into. I watch this behavior and it makes me question why I bother working so hard when so many others I love and practically every living being in my close orbit is satisfied with having a shitty, meaningless, and repetitive existence. It isn’t only depressing, it sucks the life out of you. It makes the hard work you do seem less valuable and even pointless. So, I decided to quit and fall into spending time with the one person in my close physical orbit who is about something other than wasting hours. Want to guess what happened? The less I wrote, the more depressed I grew. Even trying to get back into particular writing projects felt less like joy and more like work. I was infected with this sensation of not giving a damn. Once I let my surroundings get to me, I was doomed.
My surroundings still get to me every day. I’m working my way out of it with headphones (filled with Gongs, rainfall, and ASMR). I am trying to separate from the world I am in to reach a state of peace in which I can reach for the joy writing has brought me. That joy is why I write. It is a form of catharsis to tell stories–regardless of if anyone ever bothers to read them. I write not to be read but to create. Creation is a non-static behavior. It is lurching and lunging and growing and filling yourself up only to empty yourself out again. It is everything I’ve ever wanted to do or be outside of sports. I write because it remains who I am, and I am not who I am when I don’t.