Why Do I Write?

 To start off, I might as well be honest with myself and say that the idea of an audience had always motivated my writing. In the past, knowing/believing that someone, stranger or acquaintance, could be reading my writing motivated me to write blog posts and whatnot. Thinking back on it, I don't really know if I had ever actually written solely for myself. I started this blog to tackle that specific dilemma; I started this blog in hopes of finding a muse within myself. I believe that the most genuine writing, the words that have the clearest and strongest expression of ideas/emotions are those written for ourselves.

In the past, my writings were influenced by those around me. I wrote with a specific emphasis on certain ideas in order to reach out to certain people, while there were also times where I kept myself from expressing certain ideas in order to appease others. Even some of my most controversial writings were written to elicit a specific response from someone external to myself. Perhaps all writing is written for that purpose? I truly do wonder if it is possible to write just for personal self-reflection. Is it possible for me, specifically? Well, I guess that's the goal I'm trying to achieve here.


I want to write for myself, unhindered by the influence of others. I want to write for the purpose of possibly looking back and seeing how far or how much I've progressed. I want to qualitatively compare my growth as a person from the point of writing this to the time in the future when I'm reading this. I recently told a friend of mine about this blog, he's the only one that currently knows about it. Now, I wonder if the idea of him knowing about this blog will impose some sort of influence on me. Well, come to think of it, I do remember acknowledging this dilemma before I even told him. I told him that he can read it as long as he promises never to discuss or share his opinions with me concerning this blog. I guess I should leave it at that. Sometimes knowing that someone else could be listening is nice.

After I found out that I can actually get my blog printed into a hard-copy book, I felt as if perhaps my motives inevitably changed. Now, I also question as to whether I'm truly writing for the sake of self-fulfillment or if I'm writing in order to fill up pages of a book. Perhaps I'm just over-thinking it, since being encouraged by the idea of having written a book of my own personal thoughts isn't necessarily a bad thing. I guess acknowledging the problematic possibility of writing just for the sake of filling up pages solved the problem in itself. Now, I can consciously direct my attention to the reasons I want to have for writing: self-reflection and growth.

Where to go on from here? Who knows, but I'll keep on writing. I just needed to address certain thoughts that I believed might hinder me from continuing this blog. That's not the case, fortunately. I'll keep on writing, for the sake of writing, whatever my writing's intentions may be.