Hello, Withers — I’d like to re-roll
I’ve been a professional writer for, ooh, quite a while now. It’s gone pretty OK. It’s paid the bills. In that time, my main creative outlet has been taking photographs.
If I’m being the honest, I think the reason I haven’t written much (and shared even less) creative stuff outside of work is a fear of failure. That failure could take many forms, but the most likely is falling into a silent void. Thing is, I know that doesn’t matter.
I’m getting on a bit more now, and I need to put worries like this behind me. Writing is good for me: more so than photography. It makes my brain calm. And I have a few, extremely modest, writing aspirations. Nothing to do with any conventional measure of success — just a few things I’d like to write at some point.
So I’m going to have a really good go at writing and publishing some things: probably here, and also on socials if they’re short enough. And I’m going to try really hard not to second-guess them, or feel self-conscious about them, and then delete them.
I don’t fully know what this will look like yet. To start with, probably a few more daft jokes on Bluesky. After that, maybe some stupid poems and weird short stories. That sounds like plenty for now. Just a bit of routine and confidence-building.
I like taking photos, though. I’m going to keep doing that. It gets me out of the house. But I’m going to put way less thought and time into it. I can get quite over-thinky about it.