Hi friends,

It’s so easy for our writing to take a back seat. Most of us are busy with work, school, children, chores, or sometimes a combination of a few or all of those things. There are a million things to do, and everything demands our undivided attention. Eventually, something, after being neglected at the expense of other things, becomes urgent.

Our writing, then, is pushed aside because it hardly feels urgent. At least, in the sense that it doesn’t cry when it's hungry, it doesn’t accumulate fees if unpaid, and it doesn’t fire us if we don’t show up.

But the more we sit around thinking about it and avoiding it, the more awkward it becomes to sit before a notebook or a keyboard and create. We lose confidence in our abilities when we stay away from writing, and worse, we lose our purpose.

Writing is an act of make-believe. We create a world so vivid that other people believe that we went through what we wrote about—even if we didn’t. But that vividness doesn’t come from sporadic writing sessions, uncommitted time, or half-hearted effort. It comes from sitting down, agonizing, and typing one word at a time. In between all these sit-downs, we hate it, then we love it, then we hate it again before we love it once more. It never feels complete, but we know when it's time to move on to the next one. It’s mystical, yet practical. But Isn’t everything beautiful a contradiction?

The fuel for this unrewarding act can’t be material. We don’t write for money, fame, or approval. We write because we know no other way to make sense of the world, and no other medium to clarify to others what it feels like to experience the world from our perspective. We write to invite others into our lives, and we read because we enjoy visiting others in their homes and listening to their drama.

So, let us commit to writing—even if it’s just a few minutes a day.

💎 New From Me

I have been journaling for over a decade, and I have tried every method under the sun. So I created this video on the 10 lessons I learned from 10 years of journaling. Enjoy!

🔖 Quote I’m pondering

“The impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way.”

— Marcus Aurelius

Source: Meditations

📸 Through My Lens

Please give me feedback on the newsletter by replying to this email. Do you find it worth your time? What do you want more or less of? Or other suggestions?

Thank you for reading!

Mohamed