Introspection through written word

a collection of essays for turning inward

Lands End — October 2023

I first came to writing in elementary school. Somewhere between learning cursive and graduating from picture books, I fell in love with written word, first as a reader. One year, I read over 100 books. I read everywhere, in class, at meals, on the bus, and instead of many things like paying attention in class, talking to my family at dinner, hanging out with friends. Reality was a distraction from the worlds and lives I could dip in and out of by simply picking up a book. I frequented the school library so often that the librarians gave me new nicknames based on the current series I was reading. “Hey, Nancy Drew!” they teased as they found me reading in a tub that sat in the library’s main hall.

It was around this time that I have my first memories of journaling. To keep my words and secrets safe, I owned a diary that locked, guarded by a cartoon monkey. At school when I was in between The Baby-Sitters Club and A Series of Unfortunate Events, I wrote short stories with my best friend during recess, dreaming of worlds beyond our own. We edited each other’s short stories, to be read by no one but one another. As I got older, I traded my chapter books for textbooks and short stories for peer-reviewed research papers. I continued journaling occasionally and went through spurts of publishing on LiveJournal, WordPress, and Medium, always losing momentum after a few months.

I moved through high school, college, and my early 20s intent on figuring things out on my own, forgetting how much comfort my favorite characters once brought me — guiding me through conflicts with friends, motivating me to work hard in school, giving me a change of scenery from my own reality. Then, a few years ago, I stumbled upon a few essays online written with so much care that it brought me back to a time when I had first fallen in love with written word. Only this time I was grappling with existential dread brought on by my 20s.

After ruminating in solitude, I turned to these writers’ words for solace and found myself captivated as their lives unfolded before me. As I searched for myself, their stories created new reference points for me, inspiring change through their acts of self-expression.

Seeing possibility in their words, I found the courage to become the main character and open up my corner of the universe in hopes of sharing words in the exact shape of your wounds.

Sean Thomas Dougherty

In honor of nearly one year of writing more myself, this piece is dedicated to featuring several of my favorite introspective writers. Thank you all for sharing what’s on your heart — your words were once an exact shape of my wounds.

on cultivating intuition

It all began with intuition (or the lack thereof). My journey inward was born from the realization that I had spent the better part of my life accepting other people’s expectations at face value and internalizing them as my own. As a result of not being in tune with what I wanted, I moved through life conflicted, often feeling guilty that I should be doing the thing I just decided not to do.

It wasn’t that I didn’t have intuition — it just wasn’t very strong. I had allowed my intuition to atrophy as I outsourced my life decisions to others, seeking advice from people who seemed to know what was better for me than me. When I started turning toward what I had to say, I realized that I had spent so much of my life thinking about things that I forgot that my body doesn’t stop at the head. Turns out, my brain was should-ing me while my body knew what to do all along. I had just ignored the signals.

The more I cultivated intuition, the more people I saw out there throwing shoulds to the wind and carving paths that only they could walk. Seeing reference points out in the wild of what true alignment looked like led me to stop questioning my own intuition and wondering whether I was on the “right” path.

Learning to listen to yourself takes a long time. I used to think that I always had to justify everything to myself — that I needed to be completely rational. Then I slowly started to realize that my emotional reaction to any situation was often way more accurate than any of my thoughts. And it’s kind of annoying, because often my feelings are telling me things I don’t really want to hear.

—

Ava

, not disappointing myself

Doing what you want requires you to know who you are. The inverse is true too. You figure out who you are by doing things. I don’t have it all figured out, but I have noticed a few things. Things feel off when I’m not being true to myself. Forcing instead of flowing. Forgoing intuition for friction.

—

Matt Yao

, Authenticity is the compass

That’s why we find the stories of certain [people] more emotionally compelling than others. We know that they know who they are. We can see that they have aligned everything in their life to conform to who they are. They choose where to live, what to work on, who to be close to, and everything else based on a deep understanding and acceptance of themselves.

—

Andy Johns

, Stop asking for career advice

on wandering & unlearning

Once I was committed to following my intuition, it took a bit of wandering and a lot of unlearning to figure out what my intuition had to say. Part of the journey is mustering up the courage to thank old limiting stories for their service, say farewell, embody new narratives of what could be, and move along.

Inevitably, along the journey, I was convinced of adopting new shoulds and societal expectations which I then eventually shed in the next leg of the journey. And on it goes. Life a continuous process of learning, becoming, and molting.

the longer you spend on a path that isn’t yours, the longer it takes to find a path that is.

—

Paul Millerd

, On Losing My Edge

My favorite productivity tip is to surrender utterly to what your life is. Stop bullshitting yourself about what your actual inclinations, appetites, and interests are. Realize how much of your perceived agenda is designed to serve an outdated story about who you might have been, and what you might have wanted, in some other hypothetical existence.

—

Sasha Chapin

, The Value of Surrender

The world is far bigger than the maps we are given — only by granting ourselves the time and space to wander can we discover what paths are truly ours, rather than defaulting to the well-trodden.

—

Ashley Zhang

, Not all those who wander are lost

on resolute commitment

After some wandering and shedding, it became clear what moments in life I felt most alive. This is where the real test began. For a time, I convinced myself that despite having some nuggets of wisdom to experiment with, I should collect more data and not commit to anything too rashly. Perhaps the universe would give me a sign when it was time. So, I waited and waited, fearful of taking a leap at the wrong time.

To pass the time, I continued to create optionality for myself, often in the form of deeper introspection. But there comes a time when actualizing is the next phase of introspection. In order to integrate what I’d uncovered, I needed to make decisions on what no longer deserved to drain my life force. By finally committing to my nos, my yeses came into focus more clearly and brilliantly than ever. Writing started to flow, friendships deepened, plans materialized.

This surrender only became obvious when I had cultivated a reserve of self-trust to draw from. I believed that I knew myself well enough to pass on what was calling to me loudly for what was whispering to me. Resolute commitment has manifested as doing things where I find myself realizing that there is nothing in the world I’d rather be doing.

If Being is never put into Doing, if your potential is never employed into practice, David remains trapped inside the marble. Purpose is forever trapped in what you could’ve been.

—

Sherry Ning

, Find Purpose by Eliminating What Isn’t

But the path to the self is not a continuous process of adding. This is how we become distant from ourselves. I’m learning in my own time that true power comes from choice, from reduction — from focus. That to become more, we need to do less.

—

Isabel

, becoming yourself is a process of reduction

Committing to the slow pace of process. Going through the slog. Letting things take the shape they should. God, I really want to wrangle and interfere. The idea of falling into things feels… unscientific. But I’ve come to see that if you don’t allow randomness or serendipity to divert the path, you end up pretty miserable when you get exactly what you thought you wanted.

—

Nix 🕊

, falling into life

Thanks for reading! What writers have written in the exact shape of your wounds? What essays have touched you? Let me know in the comments or say hi on Twitter!

Thanks to Ryan,

Dylan Kurt

,

Anthony D'Apolito III

,

Susmeet Jain

,

Rick Lewis

,

Cris Valerio

,

Abhilasha Krishnan

, and

Alex Levy

for reviewing drafts of this essay.