Hey You.
Write. You need to, you want to, you used to and you don’t know how to start again. Start here, write now, for 25 minutes.
Just do it.
Really, just do it.
Sit down.
Write. One word — painfully, easily, it doesn’t matter, it doesn’t matter at all. Keep telling yourself that. Keep telling yourself anything. Keep going.
Unoriginal is fine, and so is repetition. (Unoriginal is fine, and…)
It’s challenging and frustrating, well so was learning algebra but you did that when you had to and you passed the exams and now somewhere in your mind you have access to mathematical concepts and vocabulary, and isn’t that a thing you don’t regret.
You won’t regret this. It doesn’t matter (remember?), it’s not about what you write or how many likes and claps it receives, this is part of your learning and you need to do it, damn it.
You hated those exams but you thrived on the structure and external validation, you were a good student and you worked hard to get good grades and mostly you received high marks and sometimes you didn’t and your self-esteem and self-worth took a hit and still you kept going.
You went to a top college and took challenging courses and you sat in the library basement with all the others, the high-achievers, overwhelmed-overworked lifelong-learners, you hated it and you loved it and when your brother told you about his sleepless nights during his exam period, you felt a slight leap of envy that he was there and you weren’t any longer.
You were there, for four years during college and then three more during your master's degree, it was supposed to be two years, and then you had the whole thing with getting sick and it was Multiple Sclerosis and how ironic because you were studying Neuroscience already, and through it all you did it, you kept going, you took a biochemistry course that was taught in Hebrew while your mind was quietly degenerating.
You studied Advanced Systems Neurobiology and conducted research about Activity-Dependent Neuroprotective Protein and microtubule dynamics and you sat in the library hours and hours and it was challenging, everything was challenging and you were suffering (oh you were suffering!) and you did it because that’s what you thought you had to do, you wanted to please the people, get family approval and prove your value to the professors and do the thing that smart people who go to good colleges do, which is to follow the path set out, the A-B-C, 1–2–3, and then your life took a turn because life is always turning, and that path wasn’t true anymore.
Whew.
See what happens when you sit down to write?
Stories come out, stories that want to be told and want even more to be released. Release, release those stories that you have been holding.
Write.
You need to, you want to, you’ve always wanted to except —
You want it to matter. You want it to be good, and yet you are still learning. You want the good grades and the approval, but there is no exam except the test of life, and there is no approval that matters except for your own.
Do it. Do it now. Write it, share it, and do it again.
(& that was 25 minutes. Pause. Post this as it is, unfinished and poorly titled. Celebrate this victory — the writing, the process, the practice. Return tomorrow for another 25 minutes).
