I decided to try this little writing experiment

I’m writing the subtitle before writing the text, so I have no idea if it’s worth the read

Linda Caroll’s piece on stream of consciousness was such an interesting read I couldn’t possibly pass the opportunity to partake in this little chain of posts.

I haven’t written anything but comments for a long time here, so 15 minutes of unedited stream of consciousness texts sounds daunting and, like it’ll be as messy as my journals used to be. But who knows, maybe it’s a good thing?

So… here goes nothing.

I didn’t prepare for this. Wow. I literally finished Linda’s piece and here am I. Second guessing the text.

English is not my first language (I’m Brazilian, so I speak Portuguese), so going back and obsessively proofreading everything I write is kind of what I do. I’m always afraid of using words that have connotations I didn’t really understand or creating sentences that only made sense when I wrote it the first time, so writing stream of consciousness with no proofreading is gonna be messy.

But I remember thinking back to the days I had journals when I was reading Linda’s piece and the thing about journals that was so therapeutic in a time I was feeling overwhelmed by teenage angst is that it is quite effective in taking out the words and putting it somewhere you can see them and you can reflect on them.

I’ve refrained from writing for the past years for many reasons: lack of creativity, depression, finding every single thing I write down as awful as wine hangover but overall just really feeling like I had nothing to add to anything. Like nothing I wrote about would actually contribute to any conversations or amount to anything meaningful.

The thing is: the joy I always got from writing had nothing to do with saying something meaningful or contributing to some topic out there. I’m a selfish writer, so I really loved self-indulgence. I’m happiest when I’m writing for myself. And since I’ve spent quite literally my entire life feeling like something is broken within me when it comes to social situations and being out in public, I feel like nothing I have to share about myself or what I think will resonate. Which sounds like complete bullshit when I write it down because I’m pretty sure that everyone has already felt like a fish out of the water at some point in their life, but maybe that’s just the consequences of spending way too much time being introspective and not actively sharing my thoughts.

My mind never really stops. I say it doesn’t know how to shut up and even when I try really hard to meditate as a way to let go of my endless stream of pointless thoughts, it’s still whispering in the background. So stream of consciousness is always messy for me. Maybe some of the shit I’m saying feels like it has no connection to my previous thought but I promise the jumps make sense in my head.

Like, for some reason I was thinking about what Linda said about writing for money and for whatever reason it just circled back to little 11 year-old me bursting with pride because my friends wanted to read what I was writing. A weird little tale about a bullied vampire, if I remember it correctly, and it just made me realize even if I could write for money, it wouldn’t matter because I don’t write under pressure and I don’t write on a schedule. I’m shitty with schedules. I mean, I’m awesome designing them and garbage at following any of what I actually put down on paper.

So I just went down a nostalgic spiral. It sucks to realize the thing that helped me cope with adolescence the most is so scarce in my life nowadays that it actually takes a post on Medium by someone I read to remind me I could be doing this in 15 minutes or less every day, just for myself, without feeling like I have to share it, or plan it, or put it out there for others to chime in with their opinions.

I’m a selfish writer. Shouldn’t be this hard to go back to writing for myself. I’m pretty sure I still have some of that magic inside me. Maybe it’s sleeping. Maybe it needs some waking up.

I’d just like to thank Linda for writing the piece and I hope this jumbled mess might encourage someone else to try. Even if it turns out as incoherent as mine.

Time’s up.