My Relationship with Writing

On knowing that I don't know anything anymore

I was thinking of writing in my diary tonight. I’ve decided, instead, to write here honestly and without restraint. If there is something worth sharing, maybe I’ll share it. Maybe I’ll redact some of this, or maybe it will go online unchanged.

The last time I posted was two weeks before I began my second year at university, and I ended that post with “#10: I will never write again if I don’t allow myself to write poorly.” Guess who hasn’t written since? While my expectations for myself have far exceeded what I’m able to produce, there are other reasons I haven’t written recently.

I feel like I have been in a transformative time of my life where I know that I do not know anything. I cannot be sure of anything, and I certainly cannot write about anything with full confidence the way I used to. I used to write almost as if I had a secret that no one else knew. It took just one experience for me to extract some cosmic, definite truth about life. It snowed, and immediately, I had something philosophical to write about. It has snowed many times since then, but now, I simply look at the snow and admire it in silence.

It is with both contempt and envy that I look back on myself as a writer from 2021 to 2023. What gave me the confidence to write so decisively about love, friendship, and the best way to move through life? What qualified me? When I talk about this with my friends, I joke that it’s like the lyric in “Nothing New” by Taylor Swift, asking how a person can know everything at 18 but nothing at 22. 

Los Angeles as seen from the Griffith Observatory

Anyway, it’s not to say that I’m deeply unhappy or unconfident right now. I feel comfortable in the fact that I am not too confident in anything. I try to learn without feeling the need to make a stance. In a way, maybe, I have mellowed out. I put my full effort and ambition into my coursework so I can become an intelligent and compassionate practitioner one day. I am comfortable in my position as a student not only of my professors, but of the world.

There are many moments when I wanted to write in the last five months. I wanted to write after the U.S. election, after a road trip, after every movie I saw, and after the fires in Los Angeles. I wanted to write when it rained horribly just a month after the fires. I wanted to write after I wore my heart on my sleeve and took a risk I wouldn’t have been brave enough to take a year ago. And in every single one of these moments, I realized, instead, that I have nothing to say about these moments that needs to be shared publicly. I experienced them, and that was enough. 

For a while, this newsletter was my Thing. It was my point of pride, and when I wrote less, it felt like I had nothing to show for myself. I used to consider my writing something that connected me with people, but I quickly realized that my writing was what I used to ‘prove myself’ to them—as if I were a peacock attempting courtship with my colorful feathered tail. After four years of writing this newsletter, the task of writing the next one hung over me like a burden. I eventually realized that, for something I do not get paid for, it really should not make me feel this guilty to not write. 

So: this is not a resignation, a breakup, or a hiatus. Instead, I am allowing myself to write when I want to. This could mean that you won’t hear from me for months, and this could also mean that you will hear from me every two weeks next year (as I reach the end of my college years, it’s highly likely that I start feeling like I know everything again). Here is my Letterboxd if you wish to microdose my writing in the form of shabby film reviews. 

I hope everyone is doing well, and I hope everyone also knows that there hasn’t been a single day where I’ve not thought about this newsletter and of my readers. Having an audience is a gift! There are so many things I want to urge everyone to do, but they all come down to learning: in an administration and global order that thrives and profits off of our ignorance, one of the most powerful things we can do is know. It is necessary to know about public health, queer and Black history, resistance movements, the struggles of peoples outside our own, and everything that the current administration seeks to defund and destroy. The list is endless. I can only ask that we do not look away and become complacent.

Thank you for reading, as always!

With love,
Aarushi