I Quit Writing Online for 1 Year

Reflections from this one-year hiatus

As much as I love words and putting them together to create something, I have to admit when I first started my online writing journey I only had one thing on my mind: Money.

I know. Who here hasn’t thought about that? Even for just a second?

The thing is, when I started this, I really wanted to believe I was doing this as a way of self-expression. I promised myself I wouldn’t get caught up in the whole “write- to-get-viral-and-hence-get-money” thing. That is until it became evident that the possibility of making money out of this was the main reason behind me typing words on my laptop on the weekends. I noticed I wasn’t doing it for the right reasons once I started to feel burned out after only putting out less than 10 articles.

It’s been almost a year since I last shared my words around here. It feels kinda weird to be doing this again. The good kind of weird, if there’s such thing as that.

Before I decided to stop, I remember it feeling more and more like something I “had” to do instead of something I “wanted” to do. I often found myself worrying more about following trends, or thinking about clickbaity titles and finding the right pictures for my articles than doing the actual writing.

The “Medium” way of doing things was starting to push me away from one of the few activities I actually enjoyed doing. And, you know what? Writing should be liberating. That’s how I’ve always thought of it.

It doesn’t matter if you’re doing it online or if you’re writing in a journal or whatever your preferred method is. It should be used as a means of calming your busy mind; of expressing whatever thoughts your mouth can’t express.

Sure, if money comes along that’s awesome, but I don’t want to keep worrying about views. Reads. Stats. The length of my articles. It just drains all the fun out of it and you don’t look forward to writing about anything anymore. It stops making sense.

I also remember discarding a lot of ideas about things I wanted to write about just because I thought people wouldn’t like it.

F*ck that.

If I’m gonna be back, I want to write about what I want this time. I want to focus on the right thing and not let my greedy self take control of this adventure again.

And yes, I’m aware no one probably noticed I was gone because I didn’t have much of a following, but, you know what the worst part of this whole thing was?

I fell out of love with writing.

A one-year hiatus is long enough and I’m ready to fall back in love with words. I’m done running away. Let’s try this again, shall we?