People say writing is a way to organize your thoughts. But the moment I actually start writing, I discover most vividly just how unorganized my thoughts are.
I often try to distinguish between two kinds of writing. One is for myself, the other for readers. The first is an attempt to feel my way toward thoughts that have not yet taken shape and hold on to them. The second is an act of conveying thoughts that have already become somewhat clear, with as little damage as possible.
This distinction falls apart every time.
Because the act of writing itself changes the thought. The moment it is put on paper, the thought circling in my head is no longer the same thought. It has already become a different substance. So a piece that begins as "writing for myself" turns at some point into "writing for readers," while something I wrote believing it was for readers sometimes turns out, on rereading, to be something that cannot even convince me.
Since I started posting on the rabbit hole, I have experienced this more and more often.
At first, the act of writing itself was a pleasure. The feeling of thoughts becoming clear, the satisfaction of capturing them in words. But over time, rereading my own writing became increasingly uncomfortable. Lately, even opening something I wrote a few months ago often feels daunting.
When I wrote those pieces, I believed they were true. At least in that moment. But as time passes and I change even a little, those pieces are no longer mine. They become records left by my past self, someone who now feels like a stranger.
Someone once said that to write is to die. That the moment we inscribe ourselves in language, we also erase ourselves. When I first read those words, I thought they were an exaggeration. But now, a few years later, I know they were simply an accurate description of what happens.
The person writing is pushed aside as they pass through the work. Once finished, they step a little farther away and slowly accept that they are no longer its owner. Stranger still, they barely notice this separation as it happens. Only later, much later, when they open the piece again, do they realize it.
Every sentence is, in a sense, a trace. The 'I' written there is already gone. Writing always arrives a beat late, and the moment it arrives, its meaning is deferred to the next reading, the next context, the next version of me. So writing never ends. The moment I believe it is finished, it has already become something else.
And yet I write again.
Writing takes considerable energy. When the rhythm of daily life falls apart, the energy to write is the first to disappear. Why write, even so?
Perhaps because a thought is not complete until I write it down. Inside my head, thoughts seem endlessly flexible, beautiful, sometimes even great. But the moment I bring them out, they become limited, rough, incomplete.
Writing is the act of enduring this incompleteness.
Writing is also a process of letting go of a thought. Sending it into the world before it is perfectly polished, in a state in which someone will inevitably read it. And from the moment it is sent out, that thought is no longer under my control.
So the act of writing is the work of separating yesterday's self from today's.
The reason yesterday's writing embarrasses me today is not simply that my skills have improved. It is that the person who wrote it no longer exists. Writing is one of the only ways to detach my past self from my present self.
And this process never ends. I should hope it never does.
What I write today will embarrass me again tomorrow. That is not proof of failure, but proof that I have not yet stopped. The day the embarrassment disappears will be the day I no longer move.
As long as I can feel embarrassed by these traces, I am still a little farther along than I was yesterday.
