“write like no one is reading”

When it comes to writing, do you need an audience?

When I started blogging, that was the advice I gave myself. Writing was and still is one of my biggest passions, and I didn’t want to get caught up with doing it for others, I wanted to write for myself.

And so I did. After some engagement, and traction, things started to change. I started noticing that my writing started being tailored more for my audience, and who was reading, as opposed to topics I want to discuss.

Don’t get me wrong, I still wrote about topics and experiences that have touched me considerably.

However, if you’ve been in a space where you received great amount of traction for your words, and the work you do, you know that you’ll be more inherently pulled in that direction.

Our brains gravitate towards more acceptance, and finding a sense of belonging, in a world that often feels very isolating. Connecting with people through stories, writing, and experiences is part of being human. Though, I do wonder how much of our work becomes performative, and how much of it comes in its purest most authentic form.

Work has occupied the majority of my time over the past years anyway. And writing has become less of a leisure thing, more of a skill centered around work, and getting out our story, and message. If you’re an entrepreneur, you likely know how important that is for your business.

This often makes me wonder, can we find a balance of doing and writing about what we love, while still connecting to folks in an authentic way? I’d like to say that I’ve done that well over the years, but there comes a point where I want my writing centered around the story, the issue, and the idea being communicated, rather than around who’s reading and what they’re reading for.

Bringing our whole selves to everything we do is a vital component to feel connected, and is at the core of our humanity.

Writing, like most other activities many find solace in, should come in its purest most authentic form. In an age where everything is finely and deliberately crafted to create facades of perfection, we could use more of that authenticity.

I’ll be working on doing more of this over the coming months. For some of you who are reading this, what do you write about, and who do you write it for? More importantly, what have you wanted to write about but didn’t because you felt like you don’t have an audience?