Why Do I Write?

“Sometimes, I hate taking trips to the lab.”

Writing is an arduous task. Every word I utter is excruciating. I bleed for this just to fall into hopeless cliche. Nobody is harder on themselves about writing than me. Maybe if I didn’t know what good writing looked and felt like, I could spew anything into the ether. 2020, the first year I started writing seriously, I’d freakishly devour thought experiments and flip them into long-form essays I’d publish the next day on Medium. It was liberating. All the dizzying thoughts would translate into work, no matter how much it might’ve needed editing. Then I stopped. What happened?

The easiest answer would to pinpoint the moment in time. I had nothing but time. Everyone was tucked away in their houses because of COVID. Even in the middle of moving across the country, there wasn’t anything distracting me from not writing. I was 20 years old with a dream and an audience with nothing better to do than be online. Over the course of 75 articles and way too much time on Twitter, I developed a genuine connection with people online. People really gave a fuck about me and what I had to say. This would naturally lead to some sweet, motivating story on how I became some superstar writer and how I’m thriving right now. If only life were so simple. This isn’t to say I didn’t make anything of myself and the success I made. I achieved a dream in interviewing…