I can’t remember the last time I didn’t write at least something.

Since graduating four years ago, there hasn’t been a day that’s passed where I wasn’t typing in some sort of document, on a [the thing we call the thing where we write articles], for work, or for the daily diary I’ve been keeping since I submitted my final exam of college.

In all of this writing though, I feel that I’m losing my ability to write.

Aside from writing this every month, everything I do is formulaic. Writing a baseball article consists of laying out a straightforward story while making sure there are keywords, hyperlinks, H2s, and H3s. 

I don’t even write completed TikToks. I handle the research for a topic and then provide a skeleton script, but the finish product isn’t something I handle. While there is some creativity, it’s a very “first draft” level of sloppy, and sometimes the angle I think is best isn’t actually what the TikTok is. 

And the whole point of me starting a diary was to keep me writing, even if it was lazy writing. 

But maybe leaning into lazy writing backfired?

Instead of attempting challenging writing, something that leaves me frustrated but fulfilled after slowly crafting something that makes me proud, everything I write feels something I could sleepwalk my way through. 

One of my only New Year’s resolutions was to write a short story. I haven’t done any creative fiction writing since college. At one point during college, I fully believed that I could have some piece of creative fiction published before turning twenty-five. 

That point passed nearly three years ago now, and I’m no closer to achieving that now than when I was nineteen.

Still a part of me that believes, like my nineteen-year-old self did, that goal is as easy as opening up a doc, spending a few hours on a half-baked idea that came to me that very moment, and ending that writing session with a perfect first draft.

Instead, I stare at a blank word doc for about thirty minutes before giving up. 

It’s not just creative fiction. Every month, as the 23rd approaches, I wonder if this is still worth my time. When I started, I planned to start each post at the beginning of the month, slowly working through drafts and drafts before submitting a piece I was proud of on the 22nd.

Instead, I find myself void of ideas. As the due date creeps up on me, I rush an idea that would’ve had more potential had I slept on it for a day.

The ideas I do sleep on I rarely return to—I’ve had an idea to write something about bananas for nearly a year, but that doc still is completely blank.

This piece was one of the few that I’ve put on hold and eventually come back to. I intended for it to be my post last month, but couldn’t figure out where I wanted to take it beyond the initial feeling that I was losing the ability to write. 

Had it not been for a vacation where I forgot to work on something before leaving, I likely wouldn’t have opened this doc for a while. This was the one with the most words out of any draft.

I don’t know if I have the patience to address this problem any time soon. If anything, this is my reminder to figure it out later. I’ll come across this in a few months when I go through my posts to make sure I’m not writing something I’ve already covered.

As the baseball season is right around the corner, my work days will become full. The evenings will be filled with watching games on TV, going to the ballpark, and occasionally making sure I do something besides watch baseball. 

Perhaps, on one of these days, I’ll go see a particularly thought provoking movie, or have a stirring conversation that will motivate me to learn how to write again.

Mitchell Barbee

Mitchell Barbee graduated from Calvin University with a B.A. in writing in 2021. Originally from Boone, North Carolina, he is currently residing in Grand Rapids, Michigan. He enjoys hanging out with the few friends who stayed, wearing grey hoodies, and hoping that he doesn’t get sucked into the nightly wormhole of watching a baseball game.