Every Thursday morning, I wake up and think about what I’m going to write about for this blog. I’ll come up with an outline or an idea, get all worked up and motivated to post it early (to get the most eyes on it) but inevitably, three sentences in, I can’t stand my own words. Cut to almost two hours before midnight and I’m scrambling to get something down that’s somewhat compelling. Maybe that’s what I’ll talk about this week. I love writing, but this week I’ll tell you why I hate it, why I think I’m not good at it and why words suck.
This shit’s hard. I mean, it’s easy to write…like just write down your thoughts, duh, but when I was growing up, school made writing so formulaic that it seemed like a chore. It made me hate it. I get that you need the basics. You should know how to spell, form sentences, and the difference between a colon and a semicolon (for some reason), but eventually writing and writing assessments got way too restrictive. The template was simple. You have a main point (thesis), three to four supporting paragraphs and then you wrap it all up at the end in a bow with a summary of your supporting paragraphs and how they related to your main point. There was no room for experimentation and certainly no room for humor. Maybe it’s just the teachers I had or the school system I was brought up in but it wasn’t until college that I actually got to experiment with writing.
I think I hate my writing now because I don’t think it adequately portrays me. I haven’t worked that muscle in my brain to be good enough to tell you all exactly what i’m thinking and I don’t yet have the ability to clearly spell out my perspective. I think I’m still too worried about the fact that people are reading this. I’ve gotta get over that.
This might be the weed typing but I also don’t think I think in words. **Definitely the weed typing**. But for real, I always say that I think language gets in the way and I really believe it. Words are great and all but that’s all they are. Words are inadequate. Dr. Albert Mehrabian (author of Silent Messages) agrees and found that only 7% of any message is conveyed through words. Yeah, writing might just suck. Who even reads books any more? Audiobooks don’t count and most fiction books are just as bad as sitcoms with laugh tracks, so they don’t count either. Writing is a dead medium and we all know it. If it’s not on Youtube, fuck off.
I’m not wrapping this up in a bow. You got what you paid for.
The Relatables 