I don’t have a clear-cut objective for this blog. I wish I did but I don’t. I know I’m supposed to have a good headline (who knows if this one is, I guess it’ll depend on how many clicks this blog gets if I end up publishing it), a good “lede” which is the first sentence or two, a good kicker, I know I’m supposed to use keywords that are properly optimized to push my blog higher on the search engine algorithms, and I should use a couple but not that many external links. I know these things because I am trying to take writing more seriously than ever and for this reason producing anything, even terrible writing that I’m not proud of, is better than not producing anything.

I realize I do my best writing when I am not hyper-fixated on the objective of the piece or the syntax and diction in which I’m writing it. My best writing, according to my entirely too self-critical impostor syndrome self, is when I am writing just to write without worrying about how the writing would be regarded. This isn’t too surprising; in sports, when we are far too fixated on each individual muscle, we become far more stilted when we need to relax. Writing, albeit less physical, is still a skill and every skill requires practice, but every skill also requires the courage to fail. This is where I struggle and also prove how our minds can often be working against us. I have written dozens, maybe even more than a hundred, of pieces that would be considered “failures” if we are to define success as the only metrics I could even evaluate: Likes, shares, and views. I can’t know how much any given blog resonated with a reader. I’m sure there are blogs that I might consider not my best writing where people have read it and really loved it! The issue lies in that I will never know how people truly feel about my writing, and the more I think about it, is it really my business what people think of my writing? Should I want to know what others think about my writing?

At first glance, yes, writers should generally want to know how their readers feel about their writing since knowing how their readers feel about their writing would give the writer an idea of which parts of their writing are their strengths and which are the weaknesses. The other question, of whether or not we deserve to know how people feel about our writing, that answer is no. People aren’t obligated to tell me what they think of my writing and frankly, I don’t want to know how everybody feels about my writing! The problem with writers knowing how their readers feel is that it then exerts pressure on the writer to write to their audience. All writers do this to some degree, or at least they should; Depending on if my audience is scientists or general audience, my writing will change. It doesn’t change that dramatically; it’s more that I use more jargon if the audience is technical and I use my analogies, metaphors, and parables when trying to distill a complex topic down basics. We all do this all the time. We have different parts of ourselves that we feel comfortable sharing with some and not others.

Since I’m taking my writing more seriously, I am also contemplating what it means to be a writer and what I aspire to do when I write. I don’t necessarily know. When I was still scared to say how much I loved writing, I convinced myself that wanting to write was fundamentally self-important and narcissistic. Why would I believe anybody would want to pay me to write my thoughts? I look back and, while it seemed like such a rational question back then, realize how much I was self-destructing and finding something that seemed rational to block any future that could end up a failure. What’s funny now is that I don’t what the hell a writing success or failure would look like. Would writing a book be a success? What if that book got shredded by critics and sold only 50 books? What if the book was a massive critical success and best-seller? Would that then make me an Accomplished writer? I contemplated, when I was confronting my own critical alter ego, why I felt like my words weren’t worthy to be written, why I wanted to write those words in the first place, and I contemplated why I was letting the fear that somebody someday might call be a narcissist for desiring to write. I wouldn’t call another aspiring writer a narcissist simply because they wanted to write.

The thing about success and failures is that we are creating false binaries based on shaky premises when we try to assign what would be considered a success or failure and unless we can’t do anything about those things to increase our likelihood of success, assigning them as successes or failures before we even attempted it means it is by definition already a failure, since we’ve abandoned it, but I still hesitate to even call that a failure! Because it means you debated something and made a decision, which is not a failure in some sense of the word since it means we chose a path and choosing a path means we have made a decision that altered our future. That’s not for nothing.

In a perfect world, everything would make sense and be perfect, but this is not a perfect world and even in the infinite universes that exist, a perfect world is not one of them since what might be perfect for you might not be perfect for me. What helps us is realizing that the only thing that exists right now is the current moment but that current moment is connected to your past and it’s connected to your future. No moment exists outside other moments, so all successes are connected to all failures. If I wrote a book, no matter how it performs, I would call that a success since it would mean a did a long-form writing I had never done before. If I wrote a second book that wasn’t better received, I would probably, in my mind, feel that book was a failure, or at least not a total success. But I wouldn’t necessarily say that to somebody else because I often allow myself to be harder on myself than I would ever be to somebody else. I don’t love being hard on myself and I don’t love it but I no longer say that I hate things about myself because I would never say I hate something about somebody else and I’m making an effort to talk similarly to myself. I don’t want to write to the audience in terms of their beliefs, I want to present my beliefs and see how others receive those beliefs and then discuss them further.

An issue I have long thought about is the concept of altruism, or the when somebody is entirely and completely selflessly concerned with the wellbeing of others. Is it possible to truly care for others and not for yourself? I don’t know that we can physically do that; even when we do things that inconvenience us for the betterment of somebody else, our brain produces neurotransmitters that make us feel good. I consider feeling good after doing something nice to be something that helps us. Maybe it’s not the primary motivator but we all intuitively know that being kind to others makes us feel good. Does the recipient of the act care if we felt good or not? Would it invalidate our the goodness of our act if we did do it because we were having a rough day and knew we would feel better if we help others? I don’t think it does and I don’t think it’s inherently bad that we get a little benefit from helping others. I think us feeling better is typically a net positive as we are likelier to be better to others when we feel good so more people feeling good and being good to others is a pretty damn good thing from where I stand.

I know this blog is disjointed. Part of why I wanted to write it is because I’m feeling a weird blend of emotions right now and I’m sure there are others who are feeling something similar yet probably totally different. Some of these complex emotions are emotions that I’ve felt for most of my life but lately, I’ve allowed myself to connect with my emotions, to understand them, to sit with them without pushing them away. This new strategy in understanding my emotions probably stems from my recent ADHD diagnosis. My ADHD diagnosis has given me a framework to explain how my brain operates. This has been very liberating for me; I used to think I was broken whenever I struggled with focus or procrastination or organization. I believed it was my fault that I had these issues instead of recognizing these are issues that are related to how my brain is wired and now that I realize it isn’t my “fault” I look at these issues not as personal flaws but as small challenges. These small challenges exist because my brain is neurodivergent but also, my neurodivergence has helped me in so many ways in life. I have felt trapped in my mind for so long and this led me to loathe myself, to criticize myself at every turn. To have an understanding of how my brain is wired is to have a world-shattering event; my entire perspective of myself and my mind shifted almost instantly. I have allowed myself to sit with my emotions and my patterns of thinking more than ever and I have been kind to myself. My short-term memory used to cause me problems every single day; ever since I have had been thinking of my mind differently and being far more kind to myself, my working memory seems to be far more efficient. I feel like my brain has transformed. Aside from the last 24 hours, I have felt happier over the last six weeks than I can ever remember.

Which the last 24 hours is what pushed me to write this blog. After moving to my second new city and job over the last year and a half, I have spent more time alone than I ever have. Up until it happened in May of last years, I was terrified at the thought of living alone. It turns out this has been empowering and exciting. I have been able to have a place that is entirely alone and live however I’d like for this time ever. This didn’t seem important to me until it happened. There are challenges and it’s not perfect but it has been transformative for me. Moving to new places is also freeing. Experiencing new places does something special for our brains. This doesn’t shock me; our brains are deeply complex but we do have a decent understanding of how they work. For example, we know that the neuronal networks in our brain are linked by the ones that are triggered by similar events. Put differently, certain smells might trigger memories for us. This is because the cells in our brains, called neurons, triggered during an experience where something important happened while that specific smell entered our nostrils, thus binding that memory to that scent. This connection doesn’t always exist; “extinction” describes when our brain stops making those associations. While we all might not be able to describe this concept in technical jargon, we all intrinsically understand it. Dogs even understand this; this is why they continue doing that cute thing that ends up with them getting a treat. This is why we are told to not respond to a barking puppy; if we respond, they’ll associate their bark with your response, thus perpetuating the behavior.

But new places, they liberate us of those connections. Even driving home a different route can trigger different neurons than our usual drive home. Newness does something to our brains that feels good: It does something different than what we’re used to. This might not always be a good thing, but it’s certainly something that challenges us to see the world from a different perspective and when we are going through funks or we’re confused about a life, there are definitely worse things we can do than see the world from a different perspective.

Since moving to DC, I have loved my weekends where I have no plans. Those weekends feel so totally open where I can do whatever I want, also explore a new place for me, and explore a city steeped in as much lore as Washington, DC. Last night, I realized I had no plans this weekend and only a couple of people I could even reach out to do something and it hit me hard. The excitement of exploring somewhere new wasn’t quite as exciting or fresh as it has been and, while I love living here, I was missing the people I love who live elsewhere. I know they’re close, no matter where they are, but still, last night wasn’t fun. I worried that I had used up a couple of months’ goodwill and was falling into a depressive phase. This was the worst I had felt since my ADHD diagnosis. But even while I was feeling this way, I was able to recognize these emotions — loneliness, sadness — while also realizing that these emotions come with experiences that provide us with so many positive emotions as well. The last two years have opened life up to me. A couple of months before COVID, I began a medication that changed my future. I had expected to be dead by 30 or 40 my entire life then suddenly I was handed a medication that might have doubled my life expectancy and within months, for all intents and purposes for me, CF became a thing of the past. This shattered my perspective and gave me the stability to pursue the life I had dreamt of; traveling, exploring the world, meeting people, taking on challenges, changing careers, pursuing writing, and more. It became important to me to take those jumps and see what lies on the other side of comfort.

So much of my current happiness with life has come from pushing myself to discomfort and seeing what other parts of the world exist. That happiness has come with a lot of lonely nights and days filled with only interacting digitally with people or driving around cities I had only recently moved to. These complex emotions are webs, connecting the positive emotions with the negative and the neutral. There are moments where sadness is not wholly sadness, as it allows us a respite from the pretenses of happiness. Sometimes we deserve to be sad and confused about life.

We are allowed to recognize that life does not exist in a vacuum, that failures don’t exist by themselves, and neither do moments of sadness.