Write Everyday

08.25.2018 03:25am
[Thoughts written as I revisit my love (nay, obsession?) with Paolo Nutini while drunk on mint tea coz I’m hardcore like that]

Write everyday. This is something I’ve been told by many people in my life many times over. Write everyday. Write something – anything – everyday.

I used to write everyday. I grew up keeping a diary which I gave many nicknames coz I wanted to be original and since I treated my diary like a friend it seemed only fitting that my friend would have a name that’s not generic as ‘diary’.

The obsession with keeping a diary started perhaps when I was around 9 or 10 years old. The diaries started out filled with dreams I could recall and also showcased my love for Backstreet Boys and how well I knew MTV (back when MTV was still MTV).

As the years pressed on, the pen and paper later became my outlet as I entered the weird and confusing and angry teenage years. I wrote and wrote and wrote. I had friends but it felt better when I wrote. I understood myself better when I wrote it down. Unloading emotions that my teenage heart and mind could barely hold.

I am being dramatic, of course. I don’t think my teenage years was all that complicated or that I was complicated but I guess part of that was because I had something to turn to. I had my music. I had my writing. Left with in my room a radio, my guitar, a pen and a few sheets of paper and maybe my diary, I was good. That was heaven.

Write everyday.

I used to write everyday.

Then I started to work and growing up took more of my energy that I couldn’t write down things anymore. I didn’t want to write down things anymore. What was there to write? What was the beauty about growing up and having to own up? I had no more daily mundane things to write because it was all becoming much too big and heavy to bear most times that words didn’t do any of it justice.

I focused on my music. I always tried getting a song out of me at least once every two months. I wrote alot of songs that were, looking back now, quite honestly good and were significant in helping me learn about myself and the world around me. In my youth, I was fearless and hopeful. That showed in my writing.

The deeper I got into my relationship with coffee, I discovered, the better my writing got. The more caffeine I got, the wittier the lines were and tighter the structure if it was a song or a poem.

But like I said, growing up became too much. It took all my energy. I had nothing left to spare. I couldn’t shut the noise in my head that was screaming for the noise of the world to shut up.

However, it’s in these moments that I try. I wait for a calm to come around. The calm that takes place before the madness. I take a few deep breaths. I pick up a pen and find a few sheets of paper – still feels as good as it’s always felt – and I write. It will start off rusty, words won’t come as smoothly as they did but I write. You’ve first got to write off the dust before you find yourself again.

And here I am, writing. Revisiting my old self. To when I was sure and fearless.