I started this website as a way for me to have my own space for anything I wanted to write about. I hoped, by creating a place that was just mine, I would feel motivated to write and be creative. But I am realizing that I can have the space, the agency and the time, but doing the actual work is so damn difficult.

Famous writers have often talked about how writing isn’t relatively fun, or easy. It’s hard and frustrating and madly infuriating. But it’s also necessary.

I hate that I can relate.

I get so frustrated with myself when I can’t just shut the negative thinking up, sit down and make magic out of my ideas.

That’s not that good. You’re not that creative. What will the people you look up to think? How will your family be affected by your shameless vulnerability? What if it’s not perfect? What if no one responds to it? Are you sure you should even be writing?

My insecurities stack up like a wall, confining me to a safe, private corner.

Loved ones get caught in the middle of my intensely temperamental and personal love/hate relationship that’s solely dependent on how deep I am willing to get in a day’s work and whether that produces anything of use.

I perpetually struggle through an internal tug o’ war, one side wanting to hide what I desperately want to let out (for fear of rejection), and the other knowing I can push through my demons, just f*cking doing it and accept that my happiness resides in the release of giving myself so intimately and fearfully to the world.

I’m so often paralyzed by my own creative impulses, and while someone else’s creativity sometimes bring about inspiration, it usually just surfaces a sense of shame.

I’m not proud of any of this, but I have to admit all of this before I can definitively say: No matter how hard it is, all I want is to turn my introspection and deep thought into something articulate and tangible and soft for people to fall into. 

And that is how I know this is my life’s work. That’s why I’m writing this desperate, comically honest piece and sharing my innate struggle. Because I know I’ll need to reread this every so often and tell myself that it’s okay. By stopping myself from giving what I so confidently feel I need to give to the world, I’m not reaching my potential or living my best life. No risk, no reward.

So Sahaj, and fellow writers, here’s your reminder: So much of creativity is subjective, and that’s what makes it so incredibly hard to channel your ideas into something that hardly ever feels “good enough” to send out into the world. The world is vicious. But if you feel like there’s room for your ideas and visions, then that is enough. The one person who resonates with your words makes all the insecurity of being vulnerable (and the thousands of trolls who doubt you, fear you and hate you) worth it.

We all have various ways to express ourselves to the world, and while writing is an extremely vulnerable process, don’t stop.  

After all, the magic in creativity is the follow through.