Last year I asked for a break from writing for this blog. I said I needed it because on top of grad school and working full-time I had recently taken on a part-time job. All of this was true, but it wasn’t why I wanted to take a break. The truth was that for the first time in seven years I felt that I didn’t have anything to say.
I used to write from a sense of urgency. Words bubbled up inside me until I left myself breathless audio notes on my phone, or jotted words in the margins of work documents. There was something almost physical about my thoughts–they roiled and tangled in my mind and I wrote more to untangle them than from any broader sense of purpose. Whatever came out—I published it. I wrote things that were revealing and deeply personal, but it didn’t occur to me to be self-conscious.
Part of this lack of mortification came from spending much of my life out of the mainstream. I was homeschooled my entire childhood and then went to a Christian university. I lived overseas after that, and it wasn’t until I moved back to the U.S. at age twenty-five that I was confronted with the social norms of office happy hours and house parties.
After the shock of reentry wore off, I practiced small talk like a pianist practicing scales and slowly I got better at parties. But without me quite realizing it, there had been an exchange. The girl who had spent her teenage years wearing Lord of the Rings costumes to the grocery store grew more polished and careful, but then the mask started to fit a little too well.
My circle widened. I used to write for an audience of thoughtful Christian—rooted Grand Rapidians, with the sort of shorthand that permits. My writing didn’t always translate to people who hadn’t grown up on the same Jello salad and communion crackers.
I met smart people that I disagreed with and realized more acutely the limits of my own knowledge. The more I learned, the more complicated everything seemed and writing with any semblance of authority felt presumptuous. Even worse, I lurked on social media sites where people were excoriated for careless writing. So I hedged my opinions, when I wrote them down at all, and when I reread them I sounded so sanctimonious I wanted to throw it all away.
I fell in love. And there is nothing so all-consuming to you and boring to others as a healthy relationship. Our meandering conversations met a need for self-reflection that before had filled up my journals and I gave myself over to tenderness, settling into a routine that feels sweet and too personal to mine for others’ eyes.
I used to write to find out who I was and what I thought. It feels destabilizing to dip into that well and find it empty. At the same time, my thoughts are shaped more now by my relationships, my work, and my community. There’s less soul searching for things I’ve already found.
I’m not ready to give up on writing. As I reknit my life after the beautiful chaos of new love, a new job, and graduate school, I’m creating space for the scraps and odds and ends of my thoughts to pile up again.
I know I’ll continue to write, but like I resist the urge to crack the oven before the bread is done or pull up carrots to check the depth of their roots, I won’t force it before it’s ready.
Katerina Parsons lives in Washington, D.C. where she works on international humanitarian assistance (views not of her employer). A graduate of Calvin University (2015) and American University (2022), she lived in Honduras for four years before moving back to the U.S. to work on policy and advocacy. She enjoys reading, dancing, and experimenting in her community garden plot.
