Reminding myself why I write

The last few months, I've been dealing with writer's block. For the love of me, I cannot come up with something to actually write about and it's been stressing me out. As if I were some huge and famous writer who needs to continue feeding the content machine so people are happy with me. I somehow keep forgetting that the real reason I haven't written a single word in 4 months is expectations. My expectations, of course.

The rockstar syndrome

It's weird how critical of yourself you can be become the moment you start doing something and it only becomes worst when you feel you're good at it. It's crazy ironic being the best–on your terms–you've been at something and at the same time think that nothing will be better after that. I'll call this: The rockstar syndrome.

It takes a lot of work to become a rockstar, sometimes decades happen before you get a single hit on the radio and other times your hit never comes, but imagine disregarding all that work you put in just because you're great and famous and that's the peak. You're the best you've ever been and, no matter how much you grind in the future, you're already in a downwards trajectory the moment you peak.

I think it's crazy that I've felt like that.
I'm not a rockstar. I'm not famous. Just overly critical, because I felt I peaked once.

A lesson in Oscar's history

Before having the multiple iterations of Acento en la O that I've had since 2017, I used to have a Tumblr blog where I published throughout most of my teen years. I wouldn't be surprised if my post quantity was in the thousands because I used to just write whatever was on my mind. Some of those posts turned out to be hits and got me to the point of having thousands of followers but I've never considered that my peak. Again, I just wrote. Likes, followers and all that shit was secondary because, in reality–and I mean real life–no one even knew I could put words together so, in my mind, I always felt anonymous.

Then, college came around. There was this one professor whom most people hated. I later came to the conclusion most hated him because he was tough, and not tough like in a physical way. I should rephrase: being around him was tough. He was constantly pushing us all the time and in all possible directions. He wasn't aggressive at all and though he used to say he couldn't care less about the students I know now that he expected you to become better during his semester. I was studying for an engineering degree and his class was scientific, revolving around applied math, but he was constantly correcting us on the way we spoke, throwing daily remarks at how small our vocabulary was, asking what books we were reading then forcing us to read and write an essay on a book when the consensus was that most of us had not read books for years. While I learned a lot about applied math that semester, I learned a shit ton more about how poorly I had been cultivating my mind for years. Suddenly, the semester was over, and with it, my favorite class–his, obviously–was coming to an end. Expecting nothing more from him, his exam was really light on math. I don't recall the percentages correctly, but the math exercises amounted to something like 25% and the other 75% was assigned to a singular exercise: writing a poem. For a class that lasted 2 hours, I was done with math in 15 minutes and spent the other 1 hour and 45 minutes writing a fucking poem, thinking it was going to be easy peasy because I used to write multiple poems daily on Tumblr. Of course, I wanted to impress him, so I worked hard, to the best of my ability even, crafting something I could be proud of. Results came, I got an 8 out of 10, with notes on punctation usage and verbose. Of course I was disappointed, but after class, I learned that no one else got anything above 5.

That poem never saw the light of day in Tumblr or anywhere else for that matter. It was all mine to enjoy. I never felt any other poem accomplish something so monumental and, coincidentally, Tumblr began to decay after the rise of Instagram, Twitter and other social apps. I stopped posting on Tumblr because I didn't feel like writing anymore... Then one day I deleted all my poems and posts without backing them up and I moved on.

Consequences

I stopped writing altogether one day and did not look back at all. Multiple years passed, and it wasn't until someone from work opened up to me about writing poetry, like it was something to be ashamed of. I told them about my Tumblr, my thousand of writings now lost and how I just stopped. They asked me if I could check their writing and provide feedback, which I did. Then they asked me if I could write something for them. I couldn't even if I tried. The words weren't there anymore.

If you check, almost nothing in AELO that can be categorized as poetry. There's two reasons for that:

1. I don't write poems anymore.
2. When I do write them, I don't like them at all.

I've been trying to get back to it for years now and I don't feel I'm at even 10% of how I used to write back then. I feel like I'm starting all over and I can bother myself to be new to it again. Even normal posts, where I'm just expressing opinions, carry this burden. Sometimes I have an idea and I can't structure it in a way that I like, so they end up as that... ideas.

Now, this doesn't have anything to do with somebody reading them. I'm almost 100% sure that this website has no visitors at all. I don't have analytics data to prove it, but I also don't have any doubts about it.

I'm just stuck in the emptiness of who I consider I was, and who I am now.
And, curiously, the me now is not enough to the me now.

So, I'll write to be better. If I allow myself to do it, that is.

Until the next one!