Being willing to look foolish is a key part of being happy. Me, in Ha Giang, Vietnam, April 2018.
I realised in the writing of this post that all of the lessons I’ve reflected on here refer to results that have come not just from WRITING articles, but POSTING them in the public domain as well, as serious works with my real name attached.
The benefits of having a personal writing hobby are wonderful, and if you only ever want to keep it for yourself, for the emotional and cognitive benefits it provides, then wonderful. You’re doing a good thing. I’ve spent most of my time as a writer writing just for myself, sometimes writing practical things, sometimes purposeful, all useful for my thinking and well-being.
But having done that for years and then made what was not an inevitable leap to putting things out there (remember you have to go for it at some point), I’ve found that the learning that comes from that combination of working with your thoughts AND putting them out in public has been something else entirely. I noticed the first benefits before anyone had ever even read something I’d written.
Think of it like that realisation that you’re an absolute fucking idiot immediately after you send a drunken text to an ex; you know you’ve fucked up before anyone even has time to respond to you, before she’s even seen the text; before you’ve even had time to think.
Instant learning from within.
Well it’s like that except it’s actually good. And it’s difficult at first but in the long run it feels good.
Some call it putting skin in the game — putting yourself on the line in your work or your actions. In this case it’s the risk of being wrong; the risk of having someone disagree with you; the risk of looking like an absolute gobshite. It’s a moral duty in some fields to have something to lose for the advice you offer others.
It’s also a serious way to learn from your mistakes, to better your thinking and to improve your mental health – for grown-ups.
The value of practice and patience.
Lesson number 1. We all know this don’t we? It goes much deeper than achievement though. It changes you for the better.
It’s possible to change your whole view of the world with some properly directed hard work and sacrifice. Even within articles, even right now, I doubt myself and get pissed off because I can’t think of what to say, or my writing isn’t good enough, or I’d rather be doing something else.
But then it just starts to flow, and you wonder how it seemed so hard five minutes ago.
Inspiration follows action. It doesn’t follow thinking. Learning this through the action of writing has taught me that the less I think, the more inspiration I get. The more I’m present and pay attention to my surroundings, to the people, the traffic, the weather, the nature around me — and then to what’s going on in my head as a result — the more inspiration I get.
Not: the more you lie in bed thinking about something, the more you learn.
This is constant and persistent, but it gets easier the more you practice. When you’re working for its own sake and not for a deadline or a particular outcome then you’re opening yourself up to properly learning from the experience, rather than just ‘getting through it’ or desperately trying to please an audience or some other external validator.
The more you show up, the easier it gets. To be honest it’s only in the last few weeks and months I’ve really felt like when I sit down at my computer, I can write about something I want to. Feelings of frustration, lack of inspiration and downright stupidity and mental disability still persist at times, but it’s gotten easier.
And for anyone who doesn’t see the value in improving their life, the best thing you can do for your own mental health is to get better at something.
But also remember:
Take care of yourself (aka You don’t have to write everything down)
Abe Lincoln allegedly had a line about how if he had to chop down a tree, he’d spend 50 minutes sharpening his axe and ten minutes chopping down the tree.
I’ve been paying close attention to my mental and physical health in the last few months, and the difference I’ve noticed between having ‘a sharp axe’ and not makes it not worthwhile showing up to work if I’ve been neglecting to take care of myself.
I got quite the demonstration of this in action through the enforced Christmas break that it’s important to take a step back and not be a slave to the cult of productivity. The aim is to do something you love doing, after all.
This was a stark lesson in taking breaks, and not always feeling like I have to be ‘productive’ — a state I’ve gradually put myself in over the last few years. The more I write, the more I want to write, then the more inspiration I get. It’s still growing. I’ve burdened myself by always having to bring a backpack with me when I left the house, with a book and a notebook and a pen. The panic of having a ‘good idea’ and not being able to record it.
The feeling like I had to always be ‘working on writing’ to justify the fact that I’d quit my steady job in a bank and was living thousands of miles away from home.
You don’t have to write everything down. Chances are it’s not that interesting anyway. And if it is that good or that meaningful, it’ll come again when you get back to work. The stress of feeling the need to be ‘productive’ all the time is counter-productive.
Doing creative work, half the effort goes on in the back of your mind anyway. Taking breaks and keeping healthy, talking to people and unwinding are all good things to do — they’re all part of the work. The Christmas break has done wonders for my motivation and creativity (and I daresay my health despite all the drinking and eating) now that I’m back at my desk since the new year.
I’ve noticed this translating to the rest of my life too — particularly social. And not even social life but just how I present myself to the world. The negative effects of being stressed and in bad form are reflected back at you by everyone you meet, and I see them compound.
So sometimes now I deliberately stop myself from grabbing my pen and writing down something that comes into my head. It stops me from blunting myself through overuse. And I’m better at saying ‘no’ to doing things I’m not in the form for.
Caring less about what people think
At first even journaling in my own private notebook where I knew no-one would see it would fill me with dread. Monday morning-style fear that someone would read something with my name on it, whether now or after I die.
It can take years of practice just to open yourself up to writing your thoughts on paper. And writing for myself has been great for gathering my thoughts and helping me think clearer and straighter. 90% of what I write isn’t for posting anyway. The more honest you are with it the more you get out of it, I find. I really enjoy doing it if nothing else.
But it’s in the last year since I started committing to writing finished articles and posting them online where this has really started to not just improve my writing but translate into real-world confidence and reduced anxiety. There’s probably a bit of a boost from the sense of achievement and positive feedback people offer, but for me it all comes from just putting it out there and letting whatever happens happen; let people think what they might.
It’s all about reducing attachment to outcomes, it stops you from worrying whether it’s any good or not. I’ve started to welcome any feedback, whether good or bad, and even when I’ve had some small recognition I haven’t dwelled on that either — I just want to move onto the next project.
I cringed the first time I posted something, even though it was hidden in a corner of the internet where no-one could see it. Slowly but surely I posted more, before finally sharing something on my Twitter page (no-one follows me so I was still relatively safe). Finally, after months of this, I felt like I actually wanted to share something on my own facebook page. And I also felt safe enough that I wouldn’t die if I did.
I hit ‘Share’ and hid behind the couch.
And it was fine. People actually read it, which turned out to be something I wanted rather than feared. They said nice things about it. Praiseworthy even. It wasn’t a bad article.
And I didn’t die.
Since then the results of the writing and posting process have translated into real life where I’m more confident and relaxed and have less of that general anxiety and worry about what people think of what I’m doing — not just in writing but in doing anything.
And when I say ‘anxiety’, I mean what most people call ‘laziness’, ‘apathy’ or ‘boredom’. They’re vague and subtle fears of doing things or changing your routine – of changing yourself – in a way that you want to, holding yourself back for misguided fear of what someone might think.
‘Good enough’ is better than perfect.
The more you write, the more your inner perfectionism is chipped away. Even now it’s something I have to practice letting go of, though putting out loads of articles in the last year has been great practice in that. Sometimes I’ve been delighted with them (at the time anyway) and felt like they were ‘finished’. Sometimes I’ve just been sick of them and been barely able to muster up the motivation to post them online. Sometimes I’ve had to just accept I can’t make them any better but they’ll be better off online and out of mind once and for all.
Early on I’d struggle to try and say everything I could think to say on a topic, afraid that I’d have ‘one shot’ at writing the perfect, comprehensive article. Fuck that. Doesn’t exist, and the more you try to say everything the more you dilute your real experience.
It’s worked in other things too, college applications and job interviews, and then the college course and job themselves. You could be worrying all day about whether you’re good enough or not. The important thing is just to do something. With a bit of practice and self-confidence, you’ll find that taking action and dealing with the consequences — and learning from them, good or bad — is what life is all about, rather than being paralysed by indecision and perfectionism.
Perfectionism is bad. It’s an ideology which doesn’t necessarily exist except inside your projection of reality. Realism is good, and learning to let go and accept the reality that your work will never be perfect is something writing or any creative activity teaches you the hard way (i.e. the only way to learn).
Real learning
Every lesson I’ve learned here applies to my writing, but it equally applies to my life in general. And that’s one of the amazing things I’ve learned about writing itself.
For me it’s been a form of practice in thinking. It’s not just a creative outlet for ‘writers at heart’ or people who think they have something to say. It’s a meta-skill. If you want to learn about something, write about it.
Journaling is great for getting your thoughts out of your head and formulating on the page. Putting some skin in the game and posting it online for people to see is a game changer for your thinking and self-awareness. Proper worldview-changing learning is possible with it. Again, it doesn’t matter if what you wrote is any good or not — you get feedback, even if the only real criticism is internal and the external is all high fives and participation medals from kind friends and family. And if you pay attention to your instincts, you’ll learn something, move on, and incorporate it next time.
Sometimes it’s related to your ideas, sometimes to your means of expression and language, sometimes it’s something practical like bothering to proofread it or having the patience to sleep on something before re-reading and posting it in the morning (always a good idea).
Every time I practice writing, or some aspect of it, I’m putting in effort to improve myself. I find similar benefits from physical exercise and other things but the amount of real learning I get from writing is incredible. Give it a go.
Every lesson I’ve learned has translated into my everyday life. And when you get enough positive feedback doing something, then you start to seek out doing it more and more, and often it’s hard to understand why. That’s because your body’s intuitive internal feedback loop is way ahead of your rational brain. It knows what’s good for you long before you do.
And with every iteration you practice more and more not giving a shit whether it’s good or bad feedback. All you want is honest feedback in relation to what you were trying to do. Even if it’s a post I didn’t share with anyone I get honest internal feedback after I hit send — it’s the best editing tool there is.
You’re more honest with yourself when your personal work is out there. Is it really what you wanted to write? Is it any good? Is it bland and written to ‘fit’ a certain type of article, subtly trying to mimic what’s already popular, and therefore rubbish, for the lure of status or money? You stop fooling yourself when your heart is on the line.
How do you know it’s good in the long run? When you know you know. Just trust your instincts. And through such practice you learn how to trust your instincts more and more. I test it out in other things and it seems to be working.
Be yourself for best results (skin in the game).
As I mentioned at the start, putting yourself out there is the best way to maximise the benefits of writing.
You’ll go the extra mile if there’s some risk of being wrong.
You’ll put in the extra time and effort required to see the improvements to your mental health and thinking.
And you’ll learn more — both from yourself and others.
And there’s another element to it: the more you write for yourself, the more feedback you get on your real self, the more all of these effects compound. And this applies to writing but anything else worth learning in life as well.
The feedback you get is much better if it hurts a little to look for it. The only way to properly learn — not accumulate information and ‘knowledge’ is by putting skin in the game. It’s not just that it’s morally better to do so for your readers or those working with you, but it’s the only way to properly integrate what you’ve learned. You get instant internal feedback when you hit publish. You get external feedback when people read it.
I’ve also spent time exploring and attempting to write things I thought would make money. For a while I was blinkered into trying to figure out a location-independent source of income so I could travel more than I worked. Lately I’ve realised that I don’t want to be ‘free’ in that sense as much as I just want to write.
And writing specifically in a bland, marketing kind of way would be just as bad as having to show up at any other soul-destroying desk job. You learn nothing if you’re not invested in what you’re doing, if you’re doing it for someone else’s benefit.
And although I’ve had limited ‘success’ so far in terms of money or recognition, the most I’ve had, including self-reward, has been from writing things that I want to write about, in the way I want to write.
By using my own voice.
From being myself, and taking a risk on that.
And it feels like I’m on the right path.
How do I know?
Since I started, life’s gotten easier.
1 Comment