Write shit (especially if no one reads it)

Turbo cliche but I'm several wines deep, so... fuck you

You should write.

Not because it’ll get you followers, or likes, or book deals (lol), or validation from strangers on the interwebs who put inspirational quotes in their bios (who are terrible people, btw).

You should write because it’s the only time you get to be the person you think you are in your head.

Not the person you perform as. Not the one who smiles politely on Zoom calls or tones it down for the group chat. The real one. The mess. The occasionally articulate, unfiltered, slightly what-your-mates-might-say-is-unhinged you that no one else ever gets to hear because you're too busy decoding social cues and moderating your big hairy face.

When you write, no one’s looking at you.
No one’s listening.
No one’s reacting.
You don’t have to read the room. You are the fucking room.

And that’s rare. Because most of your day is spent performing – even if you don’t realise it. You walk around like a live-streamed version of yourself, constantly adjusting the camera angle. You respond to raised eyebrows, bored expressions, overly long pauses. You soften things. You backpedal. You rephrase. You turn your thoughts into something digestible because people are watching and you don’t want to get it wrong and think you’re a nutcase, whatever the hell that even means.

But when you write? Bleuuurghhh.
It all comes out.
No pushback. No corrections. No raised fucking eyebrows.
Just you. On a page. For everyone see but with none of the feedback.

Maybe it’s smart. Maybe it’s petty. Maybe it’s you being hilarious or scathing or accidentally profound. Doesn’t matter. No one’s marking it. No one’s interrupting with, “Well actually…” in their rancid nasal voice. It’s a one-way valve and you can just open all the way up. It’s you, with no audience to please.

Because – and this is the depressing reality I just thought about in the post-wine-shower – most of us spend our lives figuring out who we are by looking at how people respond to us. If everyone laughs, we’re funny. If they frown, we’re weird. If they smile and nod, we’re safe. We exist in other people’s faces. We calibrate own whole personalities based on the expressions of other humans who are just as clueless as we are.

Imagine living in a vacuum. No humans. No opinions. No “just a quick bit of feedback”. No, none of that. No one watching, judging, liking, disliking, rolling their eyes. Would you still feel anxious about saying the wrong thing? Would you still second-guess your own voice? Woudl you feel depressed or remorseful or awkward?

Probably not.

No. With no audience, you’d just… be.

But we don’t get ever that. We live in a society full of other people and their stupid faces and their stupid reactions. And everything we do – every gesture, sentence, sigh – is filtered through that mess.

Which is why you should write. I don’t want to be that cunt who says “write like no one’s reading”, but writing is as close as you come to to existing like no one else exists.

Because writing is the one time you get to say exactly what you mean without explaining yourself. Without rewording it for clarity. Without turning it into a ten-slide carousel for LinkedIn or Insta or wherever we’re whoring ourselves at that moment in time.

Just write the shit and leave it there.

That’s it.

Don’t edit it into a thought leadership post. Don’t tidy it up so your ex thinks you’ve grown as a person. Don’t turn it into fucking content. Just write. For no one. For nothing. For the sake of saying the thing that’s bouncing around your skull like a moth in a microwave. (I was going to say flame, but then microwave just came out, so, here are.)

That thing you wish you’d said in a meeting three hours ago? Write it.
That ridiculous idea you’re too embarrassed to tell anyone about? Write it.
That thing you believe that no one else does? Write it.

You can delete it later. Or not.
You can read it back and cringe. Or not.
You can write 3,000 words of bile and bile-adjacent metaphors and never show a soul. That’s fine.

The act is the thing.
The bleuuurgh onto the page is the point. The brutal honest point.
It's the pressure valve you have full control over. The purge. Freeing up those brain slots to be you. The self that doesn’t come with a trigger warning or a content strategy.

So yeah.

Write shit.

Especially if no one reads it.

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