I do not care (much) about the opinion of others, though that does not mean I enjoy standing alone.

I do not care when others say I am weird, but that does not mean I enjoy the description. I do not care when all they notice is my appearance and aloofness. That does not mean I hold nothing else within me. It does not mean I have no value.

Everyone has their own story.

Words, experiences, music, paintings of their life held within them. My story is portrayed through my writing. All of my fiction, nonfiction, and forced English essays are part of my story.

Like all other writers, I experience writer’s block, or sometimes, the stories are flooding my mind, and I simply refuse to write them down.

Think of it as a parent yelling at their kids simply because they have the energy, and you are exhausted after working a 9-5-job at the office you never wanted. My stories are running around my mind like a child asking to go to the park, and I am the overtired parent telling them they have to clean the house if they want to go—those are the moments I realize that I must write.

For me, writing is not simply putting thoughts to words and words to paper. It is more like I am putting life into feeling and feeling into phrases that others may come across and recognize as their own.

There are many days I despise writing. I would rather eat a bowl of lentils than write something, yet those are the days I write more. Most of the time, those pieces are discarded as I had no life or feeling to put into them—but I still did it: I wrote something.

That is how I measure my accomplishment. I do not measure it by how many words I wrote, the topic I chose, or how many reads it might get. It is simply a success because I wrote when I did not want to—instead, I wrote when I needed to.

Today is one of those days. I do not want to write. In all honesty, I would rather be sleeping or eating some soup.

I had no ideas and no desire to think of an idea. Still, instead of going another day without a new article, I blackmailed myself into writing. The result is probably not a wonderful masterpiece, but rather words strung together and placed in order.

I do not care (much) about the opinion of others, though that does not mean I enjoy standing alone.

My words are my value, and though I am not always able to come up with a magnificent article to blow your socks off—I write.

I remember my value. May you remember yours.

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