Edited by Zenya Siyad
Dear Me,
How are you? No, don’t tell me—I know. I know it hasn’t been going very well. I know you’ve been struggling to write your creative writing thesis for the past few months, staring at that empty word document and desperately willing it to fill itself up. I know you’ve been scrolling through Instagram and Twitter, looking longingly at other people’s ‘quarantine creativity’ and wondering where yours is. You haven’t written anything in months, regardless of whether it’s related to your thesis or not—not even a teensy weensy poem. You’ve begun to doubt yourself (even more than usual), asking yourself: Are you even a writer at all? Everyone else seems to be thriving in these new normal, plumbing depths of creativity that they never knew they had. Why aren’t you? Well, that’s why I’m writing this letter. For you. I’m here to tell you that it’s okay. There’s nothing wrong with you if you haven’t been feeling extremely creative this past year. You’re still a writer, still an artist, still valid.
The pandemic has elicited a wide range of reactions from people. Most of what you see online is a massive outpouring of productivity. People are posting about how they have so much more time on their hands now. They finally have the time to use that old cookbook they bought a lifetime ago, to lose all the weight they’ve put on lately, to spend more time with family. Most importantly, they finally have the time to work on the things that their usual day job doesn’t let them work on: creative projects. This is what the internet is flooded with. It’s no wonder that you feel so down when you look at the things the rest of the world is doing. The pressure to be productive is everywhere and it’s making you feel like a fraud, as though you aren’t living up to the potential of the situation. The truth is, what you get through social media and what is actually happening are two different things. The pandemic is an unprecedented circumstance and everyone is coping as best as they can. Yes, some people are trying to make lemonade out of life’s extra-sour lemons but not everyone. There are others who feel the mental strain of the pandemic as much as you do. You’re not alone. So don’t worry, you don’t need to be learning how to do yoga for you to be classified as ‘okay’.
It seems as though on top of the usual stress of the pandemic, you feel the added pressure of being an ‘artist’. Since this is such a unique situation, everyone around you is telling you that this is an opportunity. You need to make use of this strange and bizarre time in your life to create something special. You need to channel all of that turmoil you’re feeling into your writing and really turn it into a masterpiece. After all, it’s what all the other creative folks are doing. Look at the memes, the art, the essays, the quarantine netflix shows—it’s all going (forgive my pun) viral. It appears as though this is the test: you need to write something astounding or you fail at being a writer. If you don’t create right at this moment in time, you aren’t creative anymore—maybe you never were. That’s the fear isn’t it? It’s also what is crippling you. All of this insistence upon ‘quarantine creativity’ as the mode for being is extra duress for your already bad writer’s block. It’s easier said than done, but you need to know that it’s okay for you to not be able to write right now. The pandemic is not a universally inspiring phenomenon, not all artists feel the need to convert their COVID-stress into their work and it’s not necessary for it to play a role in your writing.
I began writing this letter because I think it was necessary for me to be able to tell myself that it’s alright to be struggling, to have writer’s block, to not be able to function normally under the circumstances. It feels like the world has decided to stay blazingly positive in the face of the pandemic. This isn’t a bad thing per se because the bleak situation certainly needs some brightness in it somewhere, but it’s beginning to feel more and more like the world’s grin is turning into bared teeth. Once in a while, I think we need to be able to drop the smile and acknowledge that it’s hard right now before getting back into that sunny disposition. This letter was my attempt to do that. So, Me, I hope you feel better and if your fears have been alleviated, even in the slightest way, then I will have done what I set out to do.
Keep well, keep going.
With all my love,
Me