Why I Am Afraid to Write

I just cannot seem to make myself do it.

Photo by Niklas Hamann on Unsplash

Yes, I get that I am writing something now. But you don’t know, or maybe you do, just how hard it has been to even start.

It seems rather dumb and counterintuitive NOT to write, when writing is what I tell myself I want to do.

But, here I am. Hardly writing.

My profits on Medium have slowly decreased to a pathetic trickle.

And it’s all my fault.

Why has it come to this?

What are my reasons?

1. Fear. I am genuinely afraid of everything. Failure — yeah, what if I write and write, yet get nowhere. Success — what if I do succeed? Holy shit — then I have no more excuses.
2. Depression? I have wondered lately, if my lack of motivation and initiative is merely a face of depression. One of the hallmark signs of depression is a lack of interest in things that used to interest you. Yup. Major ennui.
3. Boredom. I am just bored. Precisely of everything. My self. My thoughts. After going through the hardest breakup I have ever had (I did think it would last forever). Being left with no job, no home, no husband (not to mention a child with cancer and all the treatments and worrying), caused a fair amount of personal trauma. Yeah, I know it…