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The Art of Writing is widely considered to be hideously complicated, and very few are said to succeed.

And you know what, they're not wrong.

As usual, context time!

I have written quite a bit in the first few months of the year, but as you can see, it dried up.

Why? Well, that's what I'm gonna be writing about.

As it turns out, writing requires having something to write about.

Writing also requires having the tools to write and having the time to write. As you can think, this means it's not easy for someone who has exams going on to be able to write a lot.

However, the opposite of that happened in March.

I had my final exams going on, and yet that was when I was writing the most; since then I've had nothing but holidays, and yet I've written a grand total of zero articles.

so, what went wrong?

It's not a lack of having something to write about, since I have enough stuff to talk about to spend hours of my daily life just to talk and get stuff out of my head.

It's also not a lack of tools to write, since I'm spoiled with how many applications I have to be able to write (in both gemtext and markdown, more on that some other time).

Nor is it about having the time to write, since, you know, holidays (to be fair to myself, it's not all sunshine and roses here since I have a ton of entrance exams going on all the time, and now there are two weddings in the family in a row).

Once again, I have gone through this logically and have come out with zero possible explanations, which means I don't have any solutions for it.

No solutions means I will continue to write nothing, and that is not what I want.

Why?

The answer is simple: writing empties my mind in a correct way.

A lot of advocates for meditation talk about how it empties your mind, and I won't say it never does anything; however, what these people don't realize is that having an empty mind is not the same as having a dysfunctional mind, and meditation only causes the latter (at least in my case, I'm not in other people's heads, so I can't talk about them).

At least for who I am, I need to have something on my mind at all times to not stop functioning forever; however, life never runs out of more things to hand to you for safekeeping, and this safekeeping of thoughts can quickly turn to overthinking and an unproductive lifestyle, which is what I have fallen to.

Writing out thoughts in your head tends to help a lot with this safekeeping of your thoughts because instead of taking up precious mind space, they live on paper (on in this case, on a server).

<tangent>

When I was reading Sherlock Holmes back about 5 or 6 years ago, I read this quote from the book:

I consider that a man's brain originally is like a little empty attic, and you have to stock it with such furniture as you choose. (...) It is a mistake to think that that little room has elastic walls and can distend to any extent. Depend upon it there comes a time when for every addition of knowledge you forget something that you knew before. It is of the highest importance, therefore, not to have useless facts elbowing out the useful ones.

This quote enraged me to no end, since there is seemingly no end to the plasticity of the human brain, even when we get pretty old.

Research has held up still, yes, but the more I grow up, the more I realize the timeless relevance of the quote.

The more I try to get into something, the more I forget living 101; you know, waking up, keeping myself and my house in order, making sure I don't bump into random pointy object while walking, or even walking itself (at least when the thing I'm trying to get into doesn't involve walking).

Going back to learning living 101, and I forget everything else (you know, stuff that will actually give me satisfaction and more importantly earn me money, like everything that isn't living 101).

So I guess I'll have to learn from the best (even if the best is a fictional character, a brainchild of a man who died more than a century ago) and start to figure out exactly how much space I have in my attic, and clean it properly.

</tangent>

Writing, for me, serves multiple purposes:

It lets me empty my mind juuust enough to give me room to organize, without emptying it so much I might as well have just been lobotomized;
It makes it easier for me to share my opinion with multiple people since I don't have to repeat my words a thousand times and can just point to a post saying "there. read."; and
Last but not least, it acts as an archive of my past thoughts so I can keep track of how I change, and also for taking advice from my past self because (quoting myself):

as it turns out, I only tend to get dumber the more I age; less cringy yes, but dumber in general

Not being able to do these things throws a spanner in the machine of my life, and that sucks.

PS: I know it sounds funny, writing about not being able to write and all, but the reason I wrote this was that I hope that this would bring back the spark that brings back the machine to life; whether that happens or not, only time will tell. Until then, adios.

This post was written on 19th June, 2022.

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