Turns out, they were write.

Hey friend,

I’ve always had a writer living in the back of my mind. They grip a pen, as if their life depends on it, and commit every little detail of my subconsciousness to the invisible paper. I am just a reader of their work. I’m going about my day, and suddenly “ding!”. You’ve got a letter. Drop everything, and read it. Also, there is no unsubscribe button.

I never understood why people say writing is thinking. But many people I look up to, keep claiming this. I’ve had around thousands of attempts of various scales, forms and shapes to write publicly. They all eventually got abandoned. I think it’s because I shaped them like a product. Like something I had to present, to sculpt it, until it takes the form that is worth of mighty Internet. The writer in my head was never satisfied. They kept telling me to write from their notes, and I kept throwing them away. I was ashamed.

But recently, I’ve been dealing with persistent and annoying walls in my head. I often have them on bad days, and can’t get through them. So I picked a pen and started to write more, and more, and more. About everything, addressed to nobody. I noticed that walls started shaking. The more I wrote, the more walls were coming down. Brick by brick they scattered and deformed, until they were gone, leaving only rubble and dust after their collapse. I felt free.

When we write, we actualise our thoughts, we bring them into the physical world (even digitally) and see words that look back at us. Somehow, in all this magic, answers might suddenly appear. Solutions that cannot be found by bouncing ideas back and forth inside our head, somehow manifested when we turn thoughts into lexical structures.

If you think about it, writing is where so many things start. Any project, movie, music, starts with penning something down. Writing is at the essence of the creation process. Why did I neglect it so much then? I always started something, and never was able to stick with it. Crafting something is hard, and it’s always easy to find reasons not to do it.

But does it matter? Writing is a perfect supplement of our thinking, literally the essence of our existence. Any technological breakthrough always accompanied by outspoken people saying “Yeah, this thing is awesome, but writing will never be replaced”. I did like how it sounded but I guess I never truly believed them. Today, I want to stand with them, and admit, they were right. Writing will be replaced only when humans are replaced. We ain’t there yet. So let’s keep writing.

Apart from a piece of my thinking, I wanted to recommend you something I’ve been enjoying lately.

Last few weeks I’ve been listening to Alt-J a lot. It’s not a new discovery but the music I keep coming back to. An awesome wave is the incredible album, but my favorite is This is all yours which plays like a stunning novel. Definitely a great listen, such a talented band.

I watched The Invite, and Olivia Wilde directing gets better and better with each movie. Also, I still can’t believe that Seth Rogen is turning into an actually good comedy actor. The film was very enjoyable, but if you didn’t have social anxiety about meeting your neighbours before, you will now.

After reading through the whole The Stormlight Archive by Brandon Sanderson, I switched to his, even more famous, series The Mistborn Saga. After finishing the first book The Final Empire, I realised that I’ll never get tired of Sanderson’s books. With each book I love his stories more and more. Especially how he manages to tell very simple concepts of real life, through those incredibly complex fantasy worlds. If you ever want to read a good fantasy, don’t skip his work.

That’s it, friend. Enjoy summer, it’s warm out there.

A’DAM tower, Amsterdam.