I think I’m taking a little break from writing. Why?
I’m pretty sure, posture-wise, I’m enfolding into a tortoise-shaped something-or-other.
I want to play with my daughter.
It’s hit the addiction-point.
I could pretty much write every day, all day (and often, when I get the opportunity, do). Like, not just jot something down, flounce off, and call that “writing”. But really WRITE, as in the craft. In fact, when I have time to myself, that’s almost always where I go. Endless streams of worlds of words. I love writing; I like asking questions and following white rabbits—it’s fun! It’s play.
But there’s a certain point where it’s not just the water I’m happily swimming in, and the act of writing begins to take on addictive qualities.
Case in point: this post. Why do I need to write this? Talk about it at all? I’m not self-flagellating here, I’m asking a serious question to which I already know the answer.
#3. Addiction.
I mean, what else would you call it? When I haven’t left the house in days, clicking away in my sweats, forgetting to eat…but let’s be honest; it gets worse than that. In fact, I may or may not be recording these edits to this on my phone while driving….
Anywayyyyyyyzzzzz….
An addiction provides relief and distracts from pain: an escape.
I’m not saying I’m in any unusual pain, but, like just about everyone else, I often jones to escape boredom, the insanity of trying to make sense of anything, my own fears, lack of connection etc. etc.
What’s wrong with that?
What’s wrong with that is that…
Escaping removes the opportunity for expansion.
I’ve already cancelled Netflix. I don’t really spend any time on social media (except Substack—does not count!). I’ve removed many of the aspects of my life that carried a big addictive hit. While I don’t experience what addictive personalities do, I can certainly escape in my own, socially-acceptable-and-thus-invisible ways.
But writing?
It’s not that writing itself is inherently addictive. It’s that after a certain point, I gravitate toward writing more than anything else in my life; if I’m not writing, I’m spending a lot of time, as Jake would say, clucking for my fix.
There comes a time to look at the sky. To play in the dirt. To stop.
I love writing, don’t get me wrong. If I have a thing (and I most certainly do)—it’s writing. I love watching as the idea hits, I love sitting down at my desk, I love the feel of the keys under my fingers. I love digging and finding. I love crafting with words. I love observing a project unfold.
But when I start to spiral down into the quantum of everything…I know it’s time to stop.
Writing is hero-ized. It’s viewed as something admirable; just about everyone wants to have written a book—it’s one of those things that’s difficult to suss out when it gets to the addictive state just because it’s just so lauded.
It’s not that it isn’t great. Spending time writing usually feels extremely worthwhile to me—maybe also sometimes it’s a way to experience a feeling of meaningfulness and community. And while I know staring at a potato bug carries just as much actual meaning…there’s this creative drive that says, “but if you write about it, it’s even more fun, even more meaningful!” That’s the lie and part of the addiction.
In some ways, writing for me can become a meaning addiction—the high experience when things click into a sensicalized place in bigger whole (the problem is that the further down you go into this meaning addiction, it becomes apparent that the “place” is a hole rather than a whole—things just start to break down).
Also, other people think it’s somehow meaningful.
Look, writing is super. It really is. And it happens to be something I love to do—so in one sense, it all ends there. It’s just that sometimes writing starts to overshadow everything else and I guess I just begin to shrivel a little bit—and I crave, somewhere under the habit and need of writing, to escape what has devolved into the escape.
To be in the room instead of writing my way out of it (when this is what’s happening).
I’m not going to edit this anymore, errors be damned. And I’m not going to apply the CRAFT…I’m going to get up and walk away.
Til tomorrow (see?! I told you!).
See you then.
And a very sweet comment. Thank you! 🙏🏼
Haha love this. My wife is unsure about my new found love for writing lol as long as I don’t start wandering around in a robe like Johnny Depp in Secret Window.....