ON WRITING FOR ME (OR FOR YOU)

Little Celina 'Writing' at age 2

Hello.

    The hardest part of writing for me has never been the process. Not the editing, or the structure, or even the act of putting feelings into words. The part of writing that makes my fingertips go numb and my hands go shaky is what comes after I put down the pen. I am overwhelmingly terrified of putting my work out into the public for people to read and judge. 

    For that reason, I've never posted about this blog since I first started it in 2019. I've sent my posts to close friends and family here and there, but even when I'd go through periods of posting once a week, promoting it has felt both daunting and pointless. The perpetual devil on my shoulder tells me constantly that people won't get what I'm trying to say, or they'll think it's stupid that I'm writing on a platform that is fairly obsolete in the age of social media. I've always felt that the best case scenario would be that people just don't care. 

    Don't get me wrong, I don't think that it's a waste that I've done so much writing for an audience of zero. In fact, doing so was really my intention from the start. I felt that by creating things for just myself, to my own standards, I'd open up a world of creative free expression. 

But if you can't tell, that's really just an excuse. Although it has been an overall positive outlet for me, this blog has stayed private for only one reason: I can't fail if no one knows I'm trying! 

    I've spent a few years now hiding parts of myself in fear that people would find them and corrupt them. I've kept news of promotions and good grades and opportunities to my innermost circle, because I didn't want to step on toes, or worse, be told that my achievements don't matter. Moving quietly has taught me how to do things for the sake of progress, rather than for the sake of praise. But I'm beginning to realize that this philosophy is selling myself short. I need to learn to be vocally proud of the things I make without needing everyone else to be proud of me too. 

    Overall, I'm glad that I kept this blog as my secret sanctuary for this long. It's taught me how to be brutally honest in my writing, and how to not care who my audience is, and how to feel good about creating without deadlines. But I think that it is time for me to do the scary thing, and put this out here for people to see. It's unlikely that anyone will read it anyways, so in reality it's pretty low risk. Regardless, it's a big step for me to allow myself to say to the world: "I'm proud of this. You can judge it if you want, but I'm still proud." 

    My hands have been shaking the whole time I've written this. But right now, I think that that's a step in the right direction.

Thank you for reading.

Celina Carra