Writing has always been my least favorite activity in the world. I was inspired to hate writing by my 7th grade teacher who constantly criticized me and docked me grade points for literally not dotting my i’s or crossing my t’s. Regardless of whether the information was correct.
(For the younger people in the audience we had to actually write things out on paper in cursive during my days. 😅)
Anyway, the point is, I grew up really hating writing. And that affected me in high school and college because of the anxiety I built up around the process of writing.
But I’ve seen articles you’ve written before? And some of those article you wrote went on to be cited in academic papers? What do you mean you hate writing?
Yes; it’s true. I’ve been penning some articles in the new gen internet space for about 2 years. But the process of getting through it always felt more like psychological torture than an enjoyable exercise. But I did it anyway because I cared so much about the things I was writing about. So I was able to push through the final steps with the help of some copy editors.
So while the process of writing was torturous. There was an eventual upside.
By publishing my content, I became more comfortable with the idea putting big ideas and opinions out there. And with microblogging my opinions 40k times over the last four years, I’ve kinda become desensitized to trying to make every sentence and every word absolutely perfect.
So here I am putting my imperfect ideas “on paper” and pressing the publish button every day.
The computer worries about dotting the i’s and crossing the t’s now. I get to share my ideas with you. And what I learned from social media is that you’ll let me know if something resonates (and if i’m completely wrong).
But most importantly for me, I’ve practiced writing in public for another day.