Struggling to Write

life

Sep 30, 2022 • Matt • ~ 4 minute read • 804 words


I haven’t written a post in 9 months.

It’s not that I don’t have things to say - here’s what I have on my “things to write about” scratchpad:

And many, many more things that I haven’t really materialized yet.

I think the problems are rather:

  1. There’s too much I want to write about.
    • I tend to write one long post instead of several short ones - partially because this is how I think and talk.
    • But, that makes writing super daunting, and it means I’ll probably never finish a comprehensive ACM recap - it’d just be too long!
  2. It’s been harder to find motivation.
    • Life has been … really hard, and the idea of challenging myself by writing critically is not as appealing as I’d like it’d to be.
    • That being said, there are times where I really enjoy writing, and I owe it to myself to finish these posts.
    • It’s not just writing - I’ve been losing motivation on other things too :/

An actionable for me is to write shorter, self-contained posts. They’re less daunting and more motivating to rank out.

My hope is that I get some posts out soon - but if this week has been any indication of what grad school will be like, I doubt I’ll get anything out until winter break.

Here’s to hoping!


Part of the reason that I’m writing this post is to let you know that I haven’t forgotten this blog.

I’ve never written the blog for other people - at the beginning, the expectation was that nobody would read it, and it’d be okay for me to ramble. In the past year, it’s been clear that’s not the case - I’ve been fortunate enough to receive some very sweet emails from people about how this has positively impacted their life.

In some ways, that is motivating. I feel like I do have more to say - particularly in major mistakes that I made in student leadership, that I don’t want others to repeat. But, it also ups the ante - I need to write more concisely, create more digestible content, and above all, be right - if not, it does affect others!

I think there’s also something uniquely good about receiving positive cold emails from strangers. At UCLA, I’ve been plagued with insecurity on why people compliment me - it’s always felt like they do it because they need something from me. Usually that’s not true (though it sometimes is!), but I can’t shake that feeling.

With cold emails, it feels … less like this? Even though, in practice, cold emails are usually the opposite - usually they do want something from you! I’m not really sure how to explain this - it’s more of a long-winded way of saying that I like receiving cold emails.


I’m sure you can see that this post is all over the place. I’m curious if I should change my writing style. In the past, posts take me almost a month to write - they’re so long, require research and heavy editing, and are a slog to proofread.

In contrast, this is a stream-of-consciousness, write-and-forget style post. It’s not refined - I’m betting I’ll be embarassed by this post in a year - but it also feels more spontaneous and exciting.

Anyways, thanks for reading this rant. Until next time!


Thank you for reading Struggling to Write. It was written on Sep 30, 2022 by Matt. It was 804 words long, and should be a ~ 4 minute read. It was categorized under life.