i keep having this need to justify why i need to write. if i don’t have a good enough reason, i’m not even allowed to do it. and it has kept me away from it.

excuses, excuses…

so when i started poking around old small studies to revise and help me get back on things, i shouldn’t be surprised to find a snippet from 2018/10/30 on one such justification:

on why to write {2018-10-30 22:50 -06:00}

i confess, i have a more selfish reason. to talk with my demons. not exorcise or excise them, nothing so violent. but just coax them out of hiding, bring them to a place i can see them. and in seeing them, instead of just hearing their moans and warnings on the back of my head, we can engage in some form of cooperation.

they do have valid points, you know.

sometimes.

i just need not be afraid of them.

this strikes a deep truth to me about me, and perhaps is the most important reason i feel the need to create things: to understand myself. another part of the drive –and the one that suffers the most when i’m not in top shape– is a need to understand others. i have a hard time making sense of them, and expend an inordinate amount of time inside my head because of it. writing helps me understand people a bit better. but… if i’m at a place where i don’t want to understand people, because i’m just tired of it all, i just. stop writing. even to the detriment of myself. and that is where i’ve spent most of my memory.

but that just makes things worse 🤷

that’s why i’m making myself write almost everyday, even if it’s just a revision of a study, and getting it out there. to create another reason for writing. one that has to be more automatic. a routine. and a visible one.

that’s the key aspect here. i just recently realized –quite obvious in retrospect– that i need to be seen. sometimes i feel like a tree that has fallen in the middle of the forest. did i even make a sound?

except, this drive is not really to create. it is a need to release. and that, in hindsight, seem to be the actual reason i decided to go about making a public display of the routine of engaging with my inner demons.

i did touch on it in the past, repeatedly, but ended up forgetting, trying as i was to just push through life. i hit on it when reasoning about the paradox of needing to be seen, but not too much:

(don’t) praise me {2017-03-12 01:04 -06:00}

Is there a name for a phobia of praise? Other than anxiety, I mean.

My fear of praise interlocks with a need of recognition. This hunger for acknowledgment – a sediment layer: a strata of residuum deep and old – weights me down. Yet… I am nothing – not even ephemeral – if not acknowledged by another. I can hear Hegel snickering. Would I never had read him.

Oh, praise… I ride the high it gives me – recognized, acknowledged, alive – for I know the crash comes.

They expect things from me now. The anticipation of failure settles: seeping, seizing.

Just like that. I’m gone.

but even longer ago, i also found the answer to it on a sleepless night, and that came back to be my current, rehashed, answer as well: try to not give a fuck about it.

release

and that’s the current plan. make small things. release them in the wild. (try to) do not give a fuck about it after.