Losing My Belief In My (Writing) Self And Trying To Get It Back
Posted 8th July 2026
Category: Chit-Chat Genres: N/A
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As I mentioned in my post last week, I’ve been feeling for a while that I’ve lost the skill of writing – writing this blog, primarily – and I wanted to get it back, and in doing so started to realise that it is actually my belief in myself that I’ve lost, not the skill of writing. I think going a while without writing makes you feel like you’re out of the game, you’re away from the conversation and trending topics, even if you don’t concentrate on trending topics. And with fast-moving tech and social media, you kind of are, trend-joiner or not; social media is an intriguing mix of being literally left behind and forgotten if you don’t post and noticeably missing for the same. And certainly my podcast is behind.
But, yes, it’s more my motivation and muse that is lacking. Certainly writing constantly makes you feel current and that is both due to the aforementioned social media and regardless of it – you fall behind if you’re not aware of the trending topic but, equally, if your own ideas and thoughts are not being produced by writing and consuming other people’s writing (that second one’s so important) you kind of fall behind your own self. You create a sort of content gap within yourself, weeks or months between your last and new piece of writing or indeed other content, and you lose your progress. I’d go so far as to say that I’ve fore-fitted a few years of progress in the skill of writing as it concerns my own specific interests, particularly as it took years for me to reach a place where I felt competent in writing about literature.
And – forgive the unorthodox paragraph break – I think that becomes harder to bridge the more often you had been publishing your work – an author can go years without writing and come back like they never left whereas do I notice when my favourite TikTok channel has missed a few days? Yes, yes I do. (Yes, I know part of that is social media algorithms and the push to post more and more for higher numbers and arguably to create money for the company you’re essentially creating for.)
I know that getting back your motivation, when the drive is there but you feel stuck, depends on just doing it, forcing it if you have to. I did that last week and then I let myself retreat into a couple of easy long-templated posts while I took in the fact that I’d broken my silence. And now I’m back here a week later writing a little more properly, even if not on the most interesting subject. And having done that, I’ve better topics in the works because a small piece of me now believes in myself again.
I’m going to keep trying; I posted three days a week consistently for so long and have gone through the worry of being all out of ideas enough to know that while things get harder, there’s always something waiting out there to be found and written about. I’m even here writing this with music in my ears – a first for me.
An oft-used phrase of mine: no big conclusion here, I’m just trying. I will not disparage myself if I miss a day because going back to three times a week all of a sudden is a lot especially if I want to haul my podcast back into the mix too. But I’m trying.
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