The Pressure of Writing and Reasons not to write:

 The most profound essay that I have written in my life was when I wrote an academic essay about the lack of emotional intelligence being the cause of Romeo and Juliet’s demise as an assignment for a class I was taking a couple months ago. Now, after getting immense positive feedback for that essay, from teachers and students, I was grateful, but I had not realized how hard it would be to start writing my next essay.

The pressure of writing is something that every writer experiences, but is something which I have never indulged into the psychology of, maybe because I did not want to label my faults, thus making them true. Whether it be because of the suppressing pressure to do good, or the magnifying pressure of wanting to meet others expectations, it is ubiquitous.  

Now, before I share the pressures I was faced, and am still facing, I wanted to discuss why I had not posted last Wednesday, which was July 8th. If you cannot tell by the topic of this post, I had faced pressure to write prior to that Wednesday, which is why I went AWOL; this was my own fault, and I want to apologize deeply for it. I had a new set of eyes on this blog, eyes of people whose opinion I hold very high, and so I crumpled under the pressure of trying to be only appointed to perfectionism. 

Task paralysis is what I felt when I was trying to pick up the pencil to write my next essay, and last week when I was experiencing difficulty to come up with a topic for this blog that would have topped the last one. Both of these synonymous overwhelming feelings were because of a present audience that I was trying to absentmindedly  impress. I did not know how to proceed and how to do as magnificent as I did the previous time; I was frightened by the responses that I would receive if I could not triumph to the level I had already done before, again. 

What really helped me to come out of this writer’s block was time to be leisure with my work and trying to forget about the audience’s expectations. I tried to get to a headspace of realizing that their expectations were not mine to hold up, which was difficult to get into, because I felt that it was petty to think that sort of way. Soon enough I landed on the epiphany that I needed to prioritize my time to fuel my thoughts instead. By doing this, my ideas were actually thought out and not half-baked, and to let them settle and process, before being jumped into them unaccountably. I also allowed myself to write frivolously, so I myself would not burden the work with unwanted expectations, which to my surprise, worked purposefully.

So, what I want to conclude here is that pressure is inevitable, but it is not insurmountable; what I found to cope with that is time. And yes, the title to this may be misleading, but if you do not want to write you can sink yourself in the pressure or choose to come out of it. In my opinion, I would attempt the second one. 

Catch you next Wednesday when you flip the page!