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The Writer That Never Writes

The painful pursuit of your purpose

By Emily EvansPublished 5 years ago 2 min read
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I can't say for certain when I worked out that my purpose was probably to write. Or even if it's something I actually needed to 'work out' at all. It's always lingered in the recesses of my mind, pushed further and further into the corner, like the one box of stuff in your attic you genuinely will need again, shifted to the side to make room for Christmas decorations, 'holiday clothes' that your wardrobe can no longer contain (just me?), and random cables and remotes for DVD players you almost definitely no longer have.

If the box of stuff I need is writing, the Christmas decorations are probably thoughts about boys, the holiday clothes are worries about how I'm going to pay my bills, and the random cables are commuting, Netflix, needing to get washing done, being 'tired', and the oldest, most stubbornly tangled cable of all; self doubt.

You see, it's quite scary to believe you're a writer, but also that you're shite at writing. I get past this obstacle by doing no writing at all, so it can't possibly be rubbish. This is flawless logic, aside from the fact that whilst it ensures you can't ever write anything terrible, you also can't write anything good either. Still, this method has worked for me pretty well so far.

But lately, I have a niggle of dissatisfaction growing too big to ignore. I think that everyone gets this at some point in life, and you can choose to push it further and further down with Love Island, and getting drunk, and Hinge, and taking coke or whatever your vice of choice is. Or, you can choose to open yourself up to finding out what's missing from your life.

Finding out what it is, and knowing that you have to do it might be scarier than having no idea at all. Every day you don't do The Thing is another day you're willfully walking in the total wrong direction. For that reason, starting from today, I'm going to set myself an alarm to write for 15 minutes every day.

To illustrate how much I Do Not Want To Write, so far during typing this I've;

  • Googled the ticket prices of my local cinema
  • Eaten two handfuls of dry granola
  • Got the hoover out for the granola crumbs
  • Opened up Hinge six times
  • Done the washing up
  • Taken the bin out (at least procrastinating writing actually helps me get chores done)
  • Added £200 worth of earrings to my basket then exited

So, it's clearly not going to be easy. And, much like my social media time limit on my phone, I will probably ignore this on an almost daily basis, but the little twinge of guilt that I'm not doing it can surely only be beneficial, right?

Keep you posted (or maybe I won't).

self help
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About the Creator

Emily Evans

Twentysomething crap feminist living in Brixton, attempting to be a writer.

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