First Post, Re-Introduction
I suppose I should start posting if I ever want this blog to grow. Perhaps I should get some baggage about writing off my chest before attempting to write about anything else. I have a complicated relationship with writing. On the one hand, as a historian, I’m no stranger to it, and I’m pretty good at it, if I may say so, judging by the consistently high praise I’ve received from my colleagues. On the other hand, I’ve never considered myself a “writer,” because I’ve rarely done any sort of writing that was not an academic hoop or accolade. I’ve always admired academics who have the confidence (and time! where do they find the time?!) to branch out and write about non-academic or ac-adjacent things. I’ve always felt that I don’t have the time -I have “more important” things to be writing- or anything interesting to talk about. Only in the past few years of my mental health journey have I come to recognize the deep anxieties that that lack of confidence emerges from -anxieties that I am already well on my way to working through, and I guess this blog is part of that. I want to learn to be a little more versatile, spontaneous, and confident in my writing.
Even my academic writing has been hobbled by anxiety in several ways, and I’m hoping this blog helps with that, as well. I’ve always been the kind of writer who tortuously edits as he writes, reading over each sentence a dozen times to get just the right rhythm and sense. I think I wasted many nights in college perfecting small assignments when I could have been writing something more creative and enjoyable. I always felt, in my anxiety-ridden way, that every minute not spent on my coursework was a possible point lost or an embarrassing mistake missed, and that I just didn’t have it in me to do anything else. I became a good writer, yes, but an extremely slow and weary one, and I don’t think I can pursue a career of publishing at the current rate. It has taken me this long to realize that writing is like a muscle, and that, counterintuitively, if I want to do it fluidly, I need to do it frequently -and imperfectly. Perfectionism is my biggest enemy in all of this, so I hope to make the occasional short, sloppy post without having a heart attack, and that will be progress.
And battling perfectionism means ending this entry right here when I’ve made my point and resisting the urge to make it “complete” with some other insight. I don’t know what I’ll write about next, but I’ve set aside a “blog journal” to write down ideas as I get them. It was a huge help writing this first entry, so yay for planning!