It’s been a long time since I’ve written something just for me.
That realization hit harder than I expected, especially because writing has always been something I’ve loved. But when your passion becomes your profession, it’s easy to lose sight of why you fell in love with it in the first place.
I’ve been writing my entire life. It’s how I’ve made sense of the world, how I’ve processed everything from joy to heartbreak. And for years, I’ve been lucky enough to call it my job. But with that privilege comes pressure—deadlines, expectations, the weight of turning art into output. Somewhere along the way, writing became something I had to do, not something I got to do.
And I stopped writing for me.
When I think about what writing really is for me—not professionally, but personally—it’s this: it brings me back to myself. It reconnects me. Life moves fast. We all get caught up in the doing, in meeting responsibilities and moving from one task to the next. And then, one day, we wake up feeling off, disconnected, out of alignment. That was me. I realized I hadn’t been honoring the part of myself that just needs to be—the part that writes for the sake of writing.
There’s irony in the fact that the thing that causes me stress—my work—is also the thing that brings me the most joy. And that joy doesn’t come from an assignment or a paycheck. It comes from the act of writing itself. I need to tap into that more often. Protect it. Nurture it. Make space for it.
Writing is how I understand myself—but I’ve also realized that I can get stuck trying to make too much sense of everything. Information has always been my power. I love to research, to understand, to break things down and share what I’ve learned. But when it comes to feelings—grief, anger, confusion—that instinct can become a trap. Not everything needs to be analyzed or fixed. Sometimes you’re just sad. Sometimes you’re overwhelmed or in a bad mood for no reason. And that’s okay. Writing gives me space to let emotions be—without needing to decode them. And the more I allow myself to feel without explanation, the more honest everything becomes.
The bottom line: Sometimes we need to return to the things we love—not because they’re useful or productive, but because they remind us who we are. For me, that’s writing. For you, it might be something else. Whatever it is, make space for it. Not to be good at it. Not to get anything from it. Just to be in it. To be in yourself.
That’s the real self-care.
Maybe It's Just Me 