Freestyle Writing (2023 Edition): Why Don’t You Write No More?
Brief summary on my “writer’s block” and other “writing pangs”
“It’s been a long time, I shouldn’t have left you
Without a dope beat to step to” — Timbaland (Aaliyah’s “Try Again”)
*taps microphone* Is this thing on?
Hi there!
It’s been a minute. I can’t believe it’s been nearly two years since I wrote about…well…anything! No sports content. No video game content. Nothing.
I honestly can’t believe it myself. I mean I love to write. Writing has always been something I enjoyed and take pride in. However, this past year I have not been able to delve into the craft that I know and love, or at least take part in it where it is something that is fun to do and not in relation to a professional career in the somewhat corporate landscape but here we are.
Recently, a friend of mine asked me how come I no longer write sports content on SportsRaid or do any type of web content writing? The answer I gave to him — and a common answer I have been giving to people — is because of my personal “day job” within the law field. As of now, I work as an office coordinator and handle a lot of tasks, including paralegal work. So I handle a lot of responsibilities at my job and it makes it difficult for me to do any other sort of writing.
However, that’s only part of the truth. Like everything else in life the truth lies somewhere in the middle. It is not just simply the job. Other factors have made it difficult for me to get back into the swing of things.
Coming to Grips of the Current Stage in My Life
As of now, I am in my late 30s. While I am still relatively “young,” I’m not exactly “LeBron James” either. For those that don’t know, my personal health took a massive hit in 2020 thanks to COVID and complications with other factors of my health. So I was out of commission for most of late 2020 and first half of 2021 where I needed not one but two surgeries. So while I have since then recovered I also have come to realize that I am physically not the same person as I once was. It doesn’t help that people have noted to me since then that I have lost weight since the last time they have seen me and I am fully aware of the factors that had led to that.
Now that I am seemingly moving up in terms of health I have to find ways to stay up there so that I do not have a collapsing experience like I had for the past two years. I am still learning ways about how to better my health and hopefully I can find that balance sooner than later. I don’t expect the pathway to be easy (*rolls eyes* it never is) but I am sure that things can be better for me.
There is also the fact that since I am now in my late 30s that also means that my family is getting older. So I help my siblings take care of our parents in areas where they cannot take care of themselves. It is clear that they are reaching “that juncture” in their lives and will need us to step up. So that is even more responsibility that I have to handle.
So between the job, my health, and my family I rarely make time for myself to try to do anything else. I mostly blame myself because I feel like I should be able to find ways to balance it all out but due to fatigue or sheer laziness (I can never tell to be honest) I just didn’t have the energy to figure it all out.
It’s funny to me to be honest because a co-worker asked me a month ago if I ever feel the weight of it all and wouldn’t I have a breakdown and I straight up told her that I don’t have the luxury of having a breakdown. Too much of me is being asked where I can’t falter or display a form of weakness even if things go bad for me or for other people. I have to step up and do what I can regardless of how tired or physically limited I am. I feel like I can do more and should try to do what I can regardless of the circumstances. I can be annoyed but at the end of the day if there’s a responsibility that requires my need — be it family or the job — I should try to handle it, even if it means barely having time to myself to write.
The Changing Landscape of the Writing Field
One day I will tell the full story as to why I decided to leave the writing job market all together but long story short it is due to the fact that there is no real financial security in the field anymore and if a writer is to survive in this landscape they need to adapt and make the changes in their career while maintain to their craft which is immensely difficult.
Recently, I have noticed that a lot of people have been laid off at their jobs within the writing field. There have been reported job losses within companies like Sports Illustrated, VICE Media, and the Washington Post. The writing field is a lot more finite and not as financially secure as it was nearly 30 or even 40 years ago. It means that writers will either continue to keep hopping from writing job to writing job to find their footing or leave the field altogether and aim for something else.
I remember that happened to me for most of the 2010s after I graduated from college. I graduated at the peak of the Great Recession and was not as lucky to find a long-term job. Between my time at the film academy and working odd jobs while doing freelance work didn’t necessarily provide me much security in terms of finance or taking care of my health.
Hell, there was even an incident when I got laid off and ended up like the time Jamal Adams’ card key didn’t work and he was supposedly locked out of the Jets Training Facility thinking he got traded from the time (he wasn’t at the time).
I decided to move away from the writing field in 2017 after I was let go (yet again) and took my chances on a contract job in the law field. I realized that there was a job market and made the decision to continue to work in that field from here on out. So this summer it will be officially six years since I made this decision and considering how financially lucrative I have been compared to the previous jobs I do not regret the decision even if it meant ultimately sacrificing a career I have been passionate about while being even more overworked and stressed out.
I get the sense that other writers like me are considering the same thing. There are those that still argue that the field is fine and that the layoffs are no different than how they were in the ’60s, ’70s, ’80s, and ’90s but I disagree. I feel things are far worse now than they were back then mainly due to the rise of tech and methods looking to not pay for an abundance of writers to produce web content.
Death of Self and Trying to Rediscover What was Once Lost
I also had the unfortunate case of writer’s block. After producing my last written article on SportsRaid in 2021, I just haven’t looked to do anything imaginative with my writing since then. I couldn’t find ways to do something different other than what I have done in the past. I also envied my peers who seemed to find ways to evolve their writing and the type of ways they produce content while looking to expand their platform and I had no idea how to either.
It didn’t help that the previous matters in my personal life compounded to the problem. I basically lost that creative urge, that drive to write anything. With that, plus the increasing responsibilities and the fast-paced nature of sports-content writing, I accepted a defeatist attitude and figured that there wouldn’t be any point in writing anything (not even just sports) if I couldn’t find better ways to express myself. I felt like me allowing that negative headspace did harm for me creatively and I didn’t feel the same sense of joy and excitement when putting out something I have written. It felt more like a chore than an actual expression of myself. And that is NOT a feeling I want to have while writing something.
It wasn’t all doom and gloom though. Some of my favorite web content creatives constantly put out amazing work on SportsRaid as well as other sites and I always felt joy in reading them. I never once held any animosity towards them. I admittedly felt jealously because I often go, “Damn! Why the hell didn’t I think of that?!” It’s embarrassing but it made me enjoy their content even more.
If I had a particular thought on a subject I would use social media to express those thoughts through “microblogging.” Sometimes they would end up being threads and other times it would be a simple posting on Twitter or Instagram. I figured it would be the best way to get out my thoughts quickly without overly thinking too much about syntax. I wasn’t looking for means to be perfect. I just liked to give off particular thoughts without worrying about a thought process of “beating the competition.” I could just talk about a subject matter without worrying too much about it.
It also served as a means of rediscovering myself and aiming to get back to writing without the constant insecurities ringing in my head preventing me from just simply having fun and writing about whatever interests me. I am also thinking about experimenting with one shot short stories as a means of trying something different and seeing what I can come up with. I still have my concerns due to now writing short stories at my age, probably something I should have done earlier in my life but like Drake I had “no guidance” — sorry, bad joke I know — and basically lacked someone to help give me a real sense of direction when it came to writing. However, at this point I would not know if I didn’t at least try and see what happens. I already added spec concepts that I would like to tackle and will get to writing them soon (God willing).
I will also continue to do my microblogging on social media if there’s a particular subject I am interested on. I hope to do a lot more in the near future.
Still Finding My Smile Again
I can’t say I know what will happen to me and my written content in the near future. I may not be recognized by my peers at all. I could end up being forgotten in a pool of creatives who tried and failed and didn’t live up to the hype. I can’t say that I can just give up. Something in my head recently just keeps telling me that I shouldn’t give up. Maybe it had something to do with my favorite creators recently passing away and feeling the sense of guilt that they inspired me when I was younger and I was willing to walk away from the very art that helped shaped me as a person. Maybe it is the sense of feeling like there needs to be something new in terms of written storytelling and web content writing. Either way, I simply can’t put the pen down just yet.
This writer is approaching his midlife and I would like to at least be able to do something that I enjoy and hopefully can feel proud about. I’d lie to you if I said a part of me didn’t want some type of recognition for my work but that can’t be the sole reason for me to wanting to get back to writing. I should strive for something that I have ignored for a long and that is this: simply writing for myself and enjoy reading the stuff I write for myself. I think I should ask myself if this is something that I would enjoy reading before overly thinking about what others might say, especially since art is subjective.
I’m still looking but I think I found my joy in writing again. So let’s see where I am heading next.
