A Writing Life: Why I Keep Coming Back to This Practice

I stopped writing last summer because I started a new job and had to adjust to a new workflow. Since then, I’ve been given with more work projects — work I’m grateful for — but it’s meant that my brain has been pushed to a limit that I didn’t even know I had. 

I kept wanting to write —  to come back to this blog or at least my personal writing files — but I couldn’t.  I needed to use my mental processing power for all the work tasks I had to get through each day. 

On top of the work load,  I’ve also had to figure out what it means for me to be a permanent remote-worker.  90% of my work is done independently, and in November, I started to scratch the the bottom of my social tank. 

For an introvert, I was surprised to discover that I’m feeling too alone! 

But it wasn’t just being alone all day, it was also that I had a new, big, somewhat repetitive workload and I didn’t feel like I had enough mental or emotional space to be myself. It felt like I was doing all this work for others, but where is Anita?  I had a few days where felt anxious and panicky and I had to find a way out of this emptiness. Slowly, I’ve developed different strategies for doing my work in a positive headspace as well as being a solo worker.

That is a very short version of what I’ve been processing and sorting in my life for the last few months. It’s still a process, but I’m making progress. 

I suppose it is a good sign that I am writing this now.  My work life is somewhat settled. I have enough of an idea of what I need to do and how to get it done each day that I don’t feel as mentally taxed.

So, something in me circles back to writing.

Whenever I stop writing, I realize just how much it helps me, and how important it is to my life. 

I think you’ve found something special in life when you know that you’d do it even if no one ever paid you for it. Instead, you’d have to sink money into the activity to keep it going, but it’s worth every penny. Every moment that you get to spend engaged in the activity brings you life and fills your soul, giving you energy, meaning and enthusiasm to everything else you have to do in life. 

Writing is one of these things for me. 

I recently read the book Permission to Feel: Unlocking the Power of Emotions to Help Our Kids, Ourselves, and Our Society Thrive by Marc Brackett and instantly, I understood his thesis. I understand why writing has helped me so much.  When I’m writing, I’m feeling, understanding and processing the things that go on inside me. Each day, each season is filled with a wide array of emotions, and when I write, I allow these emotions to be a part of my life. 

I’ve always been a sensitive soul, and writing allows me a space to process my emotions and my own life experience with compassion. When I write, it’s like I open up 30 minutes or 60 minutes and I say to myself, “How are you, really? What’s bothering you? What’s going well? I love and care about you enough to listen.” 

By airing my thoughts and feelings out onto a page, I can see my own life more clearly. When I haven’t written in a while, I always feel like I’m floating, like I’m not sure which direction I’m going in. The days just float. When I write, it feels like the days land, one foot in front of the next, one paragraph in front of the next. 

So, I’m not entirely sure how I’m going to fit writing back into my daily life, but I know that it will. :) 

Infinite Love,
Anita