I recently watched a video by a Youtuber who explained why, while having a tremendous amount of opinions and topics he’d like to explore, will not ever create a podcast. In it he describes the meandering flow on nothingness conversation that may eventually lead to some kind of funny or interesting breakthrough, but at the end of the day the energy put towards it is misguided and hollow. Hour long conversations hobbling around shower thoughts only to realize that if they had maybe put the effort into organizing and writing down their thoughts, their ideas would be more succinct and likely 90% shorter.
I’ve considered writing before as a way of expressing the never ending thoughts that circle around my head before, only to never really give it an honest shot. My friend Ben, who in my mind is a creative savant, writes with a consistency that is incredibly admirable and his willpower to continue to explore writing as a medium only made me more interested in doing so as well. He’s given me a lot of good advice (not just about creative hobbies but we’ll stick with that for now) on how the expectations we set ourselves set us back from trying new things. That it’s almost a selfish act to expect yourself to be good at something off the bat, rather to accept that you might just suck at it. I’m hoping I can break through that barrier.
This blog serves a few purposes that I hope will help me along the way:
- It gets the thoughts out of my head and into something a bit more concrete, like words.
- My writing gets better in a way that helps me both professionaly and casually.
- I’m able to better reflect on my own day and week once it’s layed out.
On #1, I came to the conclusion a while back after a friend sent me a HealthyGamer video (really need a better name than that) that really resonated with how I experience my own thoughts and perception of social interactions. It starts off with a tweet that says,
“Every mental health professional I’ve ever talked to has been like ‘you have a lot of self awareness’ and I’m like yes I actually think that is part of the problem.”
Reading that sent me into a bit of a shock because I hadn’t really considered the fact that the level at which I hyperanalyze social interactions and criticize myself was something that other people experienced as well. In hindsight that’s pretty dumb (haha see I’m doing it again), but the last few years in particular had been a whirlwind of continuous self-critique based on the most harmless interactions.
In the comments, there’s someone who describes the cycle of thoughts pretty perfectly:
Following my surgery, this was constantly an issue. I was beating myself up over how much I was talking about myself, and then would get mad at myself for getting mad at myself, and then feel incredibly shitty over how my thoughts were continuously just a revolving door of my own self criticism. The HealthyGamer video describes how this isn’t just a fun little quirk that some people have, but it’s actually a symptom of depression called an over-active Default Mode Network. This is the part of the brain that deals with self awareness, and in people with depression, can become over-active and cause depression thoughts to manifest in self criticism and hyperanalysis. Broke down in tears after watching that video, and has helped me become more aware of my own self awareness (just the purest irony around here).
#2 and 3 are less interesting things to write about right now, so to wrap up this mess of a first blog post, I’ll say this; I’m going to try and write 3 times a week. It will mostly be reflections of my day and/or week, or a topic that has come to my mind that I think is worth exploring. If you’ve read this far you’re either a really good friend or sorely misguided, but either way I appreciate it, and I look forward to you reading more soon.
Best
A Collection of Thoughts 