Why I Do Not Write More Often and Why I Probably Should

     A little over a year ago I wrote a blog post about Star Trek Into Darkness, then, a couple months ago, I wrote one about God's Not Dead. During that time I constantly told myself that I was going to write more, sometimes I even did, but I couldn't bring myself to post it. I am now attempting to explain why that is. I think that it's fairly normal for people who start blogs to write about five posts and then get tired of it and quit. I expect someone has calculated statistics concerning it. Blogger is probably a graveyard of abandoned blogs; I feel sorry for the poor lost things. I don't know the common motivation that causes people to quit blogs, but I do think that I understand why I quit this one.

     The last year was incredibly difficult for me. To make a long story short, I failed a course I really needed in order to finally finish my degree, discovered that I didn't know what I wanted to do with my life, and as a result struggled with depression. My job was fine but I never felt as though I fit in and often wondered if I was actually any good at it. During this time I started to find it very difficult to motivate myself, and stopped reading, writing, and doing other fun things like that. That isn't to say that it was all bad and one of the things that did help a bit was a class I took on writing short stories. The thing that that class helped me with was that by forcing me to show other people things I wrote, I then realized that people didn't necessarily hate the things I wrote.  What they would do is read them and tell me what worked, as well as what didn't. Sometimes the stories were awful but people weren't mean about it. The other thing that demonstrated that for me was this blog. I wrote a couple pretty bad blog posts and I wrote some okay ones, but more importantly I realized that I have some friends who would always read them, think about them, and tell me what they thought. I really appreciated that more than I think they realized.

     The problem was that whenever I wrote anything some part of me would insist that it was really just awful. I would write stories for class and as people discussed them I would think, "but they really just think it's rubbish". It started to get so bad that I would delete the stuff I wrote for this blog because I assumed that it was awful. I think this insecurity actually started covering more parts of my life too. I have a bad habit of not answering people on facebook or texts or emails because a part of me assumes they don't want to hear from me anyway. Over the year I saw these aspects of myself get worse, I would become more convinced all the time that I really didn't have anything good to offer, that I would never find my calling because really I had no talents.

     The realization that I reached is that a large part of me doesn't want to write because I enjoy it. I do enjoy it quite a bit, but I think that there is a substantial part of me that just wants praise. I want people to read something I wrote and say it's brilliant and that I therefore have some value. I want people to look at me and say "You are very special and talented," and then I just become upset whenever I start to think that I probably am not all that good. I think that it's probably impossible to have entirely pure motivations. I do genuinely enjoy writing, I just wish that I enjoyed it to the point where I'd be perfectly happy even if it the end product was unreadable.

     The internet is covered in lousy writing. Fanfiction sites have thousands of pages of dreadful writing, for every good blog there's a hundred completely dreadful ones, and youtube is filled with self-indulgent whiny vlogs. But the thing is that all those people are trying; they may be writing pretty awful stuff but they keep going, and by doing so they probably start getting better. I admire that. I admire people who write not because they want to be loved, but because they love writing. And that is what I want to be, not a lousy writer, but someone who writes to the best of his ability and doesn't care if it isn't very good.

     I think the biggest problem with the little voice in my head that constantly says I'm rubbish is that it is constantly focused on me. If I'm thinking about how good or bad I am at something then I am obsessing over myself, and my own perceived self worth (or lack thereof). A part of me thinks I deserve to be adored, as though I'm some tortured artist. I start thinking of myself as Cezanne throwing his paintings over the side of a hill, but then I am just replacing my own insecurity with a delusion of grandeur.

     There's an important tension in Christianity; We were fearfully and wonderfully made by a God who is both wonderful, loving and perfect, but we are also marred by the sin that separates us from that God. There is a hope though; Jesus Christ died, and rose again, so that we could be forgiven and reconciled to Him. At least, that's the quick version. I think I need to try to recognize both those things more. I am not a worm; I have gifts and talents and abilities given to me by God, but I am also not perfect by any means. I make mistakes, mess up, and sin, but I am also forgiven. For awhile I thought the solution to feeling as though I was awful at everything was to remind myself of what I am good at, but I don't think that's the solution. There's an aspect of that. It's important to remember that God gave me talents and wants me to use them for His glory, but if I just focus on what I'm good at then I'm really replacing one kind of self-absorption with another. As a Christian I believe that God is constantly working in me, living through me, and molding me. He cares about me unconditionally and loves me, and so the solution to hating myself isn't to try to think about how awesome I am, but rather to focus more on God and His will.

     I realized though that I don't know how to do that. I don't know how to focus on Christ and to live as He desires me to. I tried to pull myself out of the depression I was in by myself but I couldn't do it. I could barely find the motivation to do anything, not to mention change my life and my outlook. So I asked for help from my friends, as well as from God. I'm trying to pray more, and read the Bible more, and think about others more, and about myself less.

     I said I was going to explain why I stopped blogging, and I'm not sure I've really done that yet.The reason was that I decided I wasn't very good, and that I didn't want to do it if I sucked at it. I haven't decided that I am really good, what I have decided that is that it doesn't matter. I kind of like writing and I often feel better after I do write for awhile, so I'm not going to stop. I'm going to try to do it more, because it's when I don't do things like this that I start to feel more depressed. The only way to overcome my own insecurities is to keep doing going even if I either improve or just stop caring if I'm any good.

     I realize the hypocrisy in writing an entire blog post about myself in which I say I'm trying to focus less on myself, but I'm a work in progress. I sometimes feel like a failure, but I know that's not true. I'm a person and a person who was and is forgiven by Christ. I mess up and make mistakes and that's okay, because everyone does. I have to stop trying to get better and just start trusting in God, following God, and caring about others more.