Why I decided to stop writing.
Tags: Teenagers, Writing, Lifestyle, Blogging, Instagram

I know, this seems a bit hypocritical. A blog post about deciding to stop writing. I know many would ask me aren’t you writing anyways? Well, yes and no. I am writing still, just non-creatively. All my life that I’ve been writing, it was creative wise. And yes I love it, well I loved it. But now after years of creative writing, I realized maybe, this isn’t for me. I haven’t been writing as a profession, just a hobby. But recently it turned into something that I didn’t expect it to.

March 12th, my government sent home students for two weeks in light of the COVID-19. At the time I was excited or more just as what some would say I was on the high of not going to school for the next two weeks, but later it got to me, especially since I was supposed to be taking my CSEC’s (regional exams) that year. Social media played a huge part in keeping me sane during the quarantine, but it also messed me up. Lots of my time was spent on Instagram, and in the early April I saw posts about Escapril all over my feed, I then made the irrational decision to start a writing Instagram page for Escapril.

I wanted to keep this page as a secret, but somehow my friends managed to find it. I have a friend that writes as well and she decided to start a page with me and we did Escapril together. Writing these poems based of prompts daily and sharing them with my friends before posting it made me happy. It allowed for me to stop thinking about the situation we’re in and to just write. The writing community was so welcoming and I interacted with so many great persons. I even managed to be on the internal board of a writing organization. So yes, it was great, but after a while it became draining.

I started comparing myself to other Instagram writers’ work, even that of my own friend’s. Before Escapril even ended I was struggling to get the prompts out for the rest of April. I even broke down over one of them. Which makes no sense. I started this page for fun with prompts and I managed to take it too seriously to the point of breaking down over not being able write a poem or piece from a prompt. My school life was terrible as well, the examinational council had no idea what to do for our exams with COVID-19 being a main factor. I took a break. I took a break from writing a little after Escapril. I unintentionally took a long mental break from the Instagram page and my WIP at the time.

And for some reason I just decided to come back and try NaNoWriMo. Why the hell did I do that? You only get thirty days to write fifty thousands words for your WIP. So I came back to my dead Instagram page to post small updates about my WIP, I even made templates as to get me excited. But, after a week or two I began to feel burnt out. I wrote up to about 18k+ words in the month and some would say “that’s eighteen thousand more than what you had last time” but that wasn’t the goal. The goal was to get to 50k within the month of November, but I failed, no?

I feel like I spent so much of my life creatively writing that the little Instagram page I had with less than 200 followers, the novel I started but didn’t finish and I don’t think I ever will, and the little acceptance I felt in the writing community I wanted to validate myself as a writer.

I recently had a conversation with a friend and like 1 AM and I was telling her that I don’t want to continue writing anymore. It was so draining of feeling that I’ve been writing for over eight years to see that I’m not even good. To see that I’m very much average. She would try her best to reconcile me and tell me I’m a good writer and whatnot but I’ve feeling this feeling for a while. That I’m not that special.

I don’t want to talk about writing unless it has to do with organization I’m in. Side note: I completely love the non-profit organization I’m and the people I work with.

I just want to be. As the colloquial term is “I just wanna vibe,”

I don’t even think I will tell my friends about this. I may not even update this blog regularly. I just want to enjoy writing even in this weird way. And I can get a little side money writing out my thoughts on this platform then, hmm so be it.

Whoever sees this I hope you are having a great day

From, Zoe.