I Stopped Writing Every Day and My Life Fell Apart

Day 101

So, I’m back.

I stopped writing every day because I hit my 100 words for 100 days. This actually wasn’t my goal — my goal was to write 100 words a day for 365 days (a full year), but I convinced my self that 1) the challenge was no longer providing me any benefit and 2) 100 days was long enough. The next day, I woke up to a race riot in Charlottesville.

I wanted to write something so badly as I had a lot of thoughts about it. However, I put a lot of pressure on myself to write something prolific. Once again, I fell into the habit of perfectionism which stopped me from producing. Since I quit the challenge on Friday, I have published exactly no words — unless you count a couple of sentence-long Facebook statuses.

Of course, there is no need to write about this tragedy and I’m still trying to collect my thoughts. However, I realized that writing anything was a way to get my thoughts out so they aren’t so jumbled. They weigh me down throughout the day. I didn’t realize how therapeutic my seemingly incoherent ramblings about nothing were. It’s a way to escape and find myself when I don’t know which I want to do. I’m thankful for it and I’m going to keep doing it.