When I started the 30-day writing challenge back in the beginning of February, I thought that my writing would really take off. I believed that I’d diligently write everyday, at least 20 minutes, consistently working through a new notebook.
Through the Quiet Girls Art Collective, a small group my best friend, Ashleigh and I created to foster creativity between friends – the 30-day challenge was proposed! We three: a writer, a poet, and I decided to take the challenge and see what happens after our 30 days. I was unusually optimistic about it, but I really wanted the other girls fired up. I wanted my sudden passion to feel contagious. In order to keep myself in check, I decided to document my writing through Instagram accountability: each day, I would post about my writing in an attempt to keep myself on schedule.
On my Da’s birthday. 
Dog-sitting with my mum.
By day 05, I was tired. I was tired of having to curate photos to post. I was tired of getting on Instagram after a joyous 4-month break. And more importantly, I wasn’t really doing much writing, apart from semi-lengthy posts. But what I did learn is what Adam Haslett calls: the paradox of writing.
“Spending time trying to craft something to communicate with others often leaves one swimming in solitude, spending huge amounts of time alone.”
Unlike Adam, I hadn’t recently emerged from a five-year long psychosis – an imaginary world that only I could see, feel, and hear until I’d written it all on paper and shared it with the world. No, I had simply taken to social media and wrote about my reality – I wrote about my everyday life, yet I still felt the pangs of a writer’s solitude.
My primary reason for taking on the challenge was to push myself to write consistently, just as I had as a teenager and young(er) adult.
Writing meant self-expression. Writing meant creativity. Writing meant free therapy. Writing meant freedom.
“Writing may require solitude, but it is in essence an effort to connect.”
No habit can be formed within 30-days of going through the motions. Sometimes, my best pieces of writing were the short posts to keep myself accountable. At best, it was publishing a new blog post and feeling proud that people enjoyed what I wrote. It made the little world that I lived in feel not so lonely.
“I miss the way you drink from cans. Tabs off, tin’s crushed and smashed.”
A poem for my brother
For the year I’d been abroad, I hardly spared a moment to write creatively. I wrote not one blog post. I clung to the loneliness of a writer. I had effectively removed myself from life to return again. To bridge the gap that I’d created in my absence, now, I am writing again.
As an artist, as a writer, and as a creature so familiar with solitude – here I am “using my experiences to create something that can be shared in common”.
Here’s to writing more and not giving in, and not giving up! Here’s to leaving loneliness behind and making more connections. ❤
Her Lavender Latte 