On Clinging to Writing

I don’t believe in the whole New Year, New Me cliché. I’ve never been convinced that transformation requires a specific date on the calendar. You can change the course of your life at any point, if you’re motivated enough.

That said—something has shifted for me these past few weeks.

I feel furiously creative and insatiably curious. I want to learn, connect, and engage. I want to write. The urge feels physical, almost electrical—hard to explain, but unmistakable. In the simplest terms, I feel the urge to live.

And maybe you know this feeling too: that low hum under everything that says pay attention—something is waking up.

Almost immediately, though, I run into the familiar barricades.

There is no time unless I fight and claw to carve it out myself. I spent an hour and a half scouring the internet for writing workshops at public libraries, only to find one an hour away—where I could attend for forty-five minutes of a two-hour session before other professional obligations called me back. Back to the world that pays the bills. Back to the logistics of being an adult.

Sigh.

When I was thirteen and first began sharing my writing—with teachers, with loved ones—I was often met with a particular phrase: “I used to write, but then, you know… life.” It was always said gently. Sometimes wistfully. Sometimes as a warning.

Somewhere deep in the pliable folds of my teenage brain, I made a decision. I would never become one of those adults. I would go to college for writing. I would start a writing business. I would write and publish and keep writing, so that I would never look at some sharp, brilliant teenager and say I used to.

But fuck, it’s hard.

There doesn’t seem to be a cure for this disease called life. The emails, the commutes, the appointments, the endless small demands that quietly eat the hours. The way creativity becomes something you have to justify instead of something you’re allowed to need.

So I cling.

I cling to audiobooks that let us read while driving to our silly jobs that pay for our lifestyles. I cling to Post-It notes that harbor half-formed scribbles—the most writing I can sometimes manage.

I cling to stubbornness and compulsivity. To the fact that I am just as diseased as life itself, and yet unable to give up this wild dream of writing—of writing well, of publishing something that feels true.

I cling to ego.

Maybe that’s not noble. Maybe it’s not even healthy. But it’s honest.

This isn’t a manifesto. There’s no tidy lesson here, no resolution where everything suddenly balances. It’s just me taking stock—half-rushed, as so many of us are—trying to make sense of the world before stepping back into it for the day.

That’s all.

Or maybe it’s just the beginning of saying it out loud.