It wasn’t until I read a well-meaning comment by a friend on my recent Instagram post that I realized what had been missing from my life lately – writing. She said she hoped I continued visiting new places and writing about them, except I hadn’t been writing. Not unless you count academic papers and the occasional news article as writing. It reminded me of a time when a fundamental aspect of my experience with new places, feelings, and people used to be my penchant for putting it into words. I didn’t remember the last time I did that. As someone who intends to make a living out of writing, the thought that I had probably lost the ability did scare me. 

Up until the first year of college, I remember having the interest and the ability to write and share my thoughts and opinions in a public forum. Yet as the years went by, I found myself slowly withdrawing into a corner, shedding the confidence I had walked into college with, at least in terms of my writing. My conviction in my own voice dwindled even further when I was confronted with the very obvious fact that there were much better writers out there. How was I to compete? Why should I even bother? 

I don’t believe my case is unique – after a sheltered upbringing, any encounter with the fact that you’re average at best is bound to throw anyone off their carefully curated plan. University is where we have ugly reality checks about our Twitter-informed opinions and pop culture-influenced writing, and we (rightfully) throw most of our naïveté out. When I began pursuing journalism, it helped to discover that reporting on current events does not often require one to use their opinion, or even their own words if they try hard enough. 

In a bid to follow my dream, I didn’t realize when I stopped being a writer and turned more into one of those speech-to-text apps.

I was so afraid of showing my own voice that I ended up writing pieces that were almost as stimulating as restaurant menus. As I navigated this fear along with the need to write, I ended up throwing out the one thing that attracted me to being a writer in the first place – my love for it. I began to see feedback on my writing as feedback on my ability to perceive things around me and believed it best to shut down the very thing that made my writing mine. 

I found solace in little wins like an A on a paper, or a well-crafted headline for an otherwise banal article, satisfied with injecting passion into my work in measured ways. At the same time, I confined my spirited writing to the realm of the personal — notes, letters, and emails to my loved ones that I put my soul into (a little misguidedly at times, I’ll admit). It is an activity I enjoy greatly, but also one I realize is safe from scrutiny. After all, there’s no room for feedback on how I express my love for my friends. 

I began to see feedback on my writing as feedback on my ability to perceive things around me and believed it best to shut down the very thing that made my writing mine. 

As I prepare myself to graduate though, I hope to rediscover my love for writing, and my voice too, in the process. It is a daunting task to come to terms with the fact that you, in colloquial terms, don’t entirely suck. It also takes a lot of practice to find your voice when you’ve spent the better part of the last three years trying to emulate that of those smarter than you. I believe that the first step, however, is to admit to yourself that you’ve lost yours – it happens when you may know the right words but the sentiment of your work is alien to you. Everything after that is a quest for that lost sentiment. Writing this piece was my first step. I hope the rest are recorded on this platform too.