Why do I write? As the question implies, it’s looking for the driving force behind an ongoing action. Yet it gives no hint about how long this act has actually been going on. I think questions like this are entirely “results-oriented.” They assume the journey and the dirt under your fingernails along the way don’t really matter. Maybe you, the reader, fall into that exact category. Maybe you clicked this link just to validate something you already believe, or to squeeze some quick practical value out of it. You want the takeaway so you can close the tab. Let me stop you right there. This isn’t that kind of blog, it’s not the goal here, and it’s certainly not why I write.
Don’t get me wrong, I still catch myself doing the exact same thing. Pragmatic urges hit me too, several times a day. Year after year, I realize I’m stuck spinning in the same loop just like everyone else. Funny enough, spinning in loops is an actual hobby of mine. I run. Most weeks, you can find me tracing the exact same route or literally running in circles on a track for hours on end. People ask if I get bored doing that. The truth is, in the same way we tune out the endless cycle of our daily grinds, I tune out the physical running loop. Sometimes it hits me though. I’ll ask myself why I’m not bored yet. A bunch of different answers flash through my head. Usually, I just grab one of them so I don’t have to overthink it. Depending on my mood that day, I decide which answer is the truth.
The Courtroom in My Head
In all this chaos, writing brings the focused silence of a courtroom. I’m talking about the trial itself, of course. It doesn’t promise that the madness won’t return the second the session ends. But at the very least, it gives the conflicting voices and clashing ideas in my head a strict, equal opportunity to speak. They get to air their grievances. And the emotions that spike my blood sugar and raise my pulse finally find a real mental outlet instead of just a physical one. And really, isn’t that what everything is about? Words, languages, books, poetry, they all start right here.
Why do we even need words? Why did early humans, people who couldn’t fall back on language, bother painting on cave walls? Why do people sharing the same patch of land naturally develop a shared tongue? You can Google the answers to all of this in five minutes. What I really mean is this: just because we have feelings that words fail to capture, doesn’t mean we no longer need words. In my view, writing is simply a tool that extends our contact time with words. For a generation that watches YouTube videos at 2x speed, writing does the exact opposite. I am a fast talker by nature. Because of that, writing is a much more calming experience for me than speaking. Sure, my terrible handwriting ruins the romance of it a bit, but it still forces me to slow down. It strips my brain of its favorite shortcuts and forces it to evaluate everything properly. Eventually, I build new shortcuts of my own making. Maybe that explains why mental health professionals rely so heavily on writing.
One Notebook Per Class
There is another reason I consciously choose to write. It took me years to realize how much it actually shaped my life and career.
I started taking on full-time work while I was still in college. Oddly enough, that made exam weeks feel like vacation time. A normal week meant dragging myself to mandatory classes, juggling group projects, and still clocking in at work. Add college social life into the mix, and it was rough. I really didn’t want exam weeks to feel just as chaotic. So I came up with a plan to spread my studying out. Maybe an hour a day, just a couple of days a week. I went out and bought a separate little notebook for every class. My goal was simple: write down notes, test questions, and answers by hand. To be honest, I was usually too tired to focus properly during lectures anyway. But once I got home and shoved my face into those notebooks, the focus would finally kick in and I’d write down whatever we covered that week. My entire thought process was: if I take notes now and learn the material, exam week will be a breeze. I’ll just flip through the pages and spend the rest of the time relaxing.
But exams rarely stick to the plan. The biggest issue was my terrible handwriting. It was so bad that even I couldn’t read what I had written. I would sit there squinting at my own notes, questioning why I wasted so much energy writing them down in the first place. But I’m stubborn about my routines. I would solve a few practice questions, wrap up studying within an hour or two, and jump right into the video games I had been dying to play. After taking the tests, I usually walked out feeling pretty confident. And my grades actually reflected that. To be perfectly honest, it surprised me. I graduated with honors despite never pulling a single all-nighter. It made zero sense. If there is one thing I know for sure, it is that I don’t have some crazy biological advantage or an exceptionally high IQ. I am just average. Even though I didn’t understand the science behind it at the time, I saw that the pen-and-paper method worked. So I stuck with it until I got my degree.
What I Realized Years Later
The actual learning didn’t happen when I tried to read those notebooks later. It happened during the physical act of writing them.
The Task With No API Documentation
Once I graduated and shifted my entire focus to my career, I stopped writing as much. As a software engineer, I just typed my notes on a keyboard and dumped them into the cloud, never to be opened again. Exactly like my old college notebooks. When I was eventually promoted from solving pure code problems to actually building a team, I quickly realized there was no API documentation or corporate training that could save me. A million things were racing through my mind, but anxiety and imposter syndrome were by far the loudest. Without even realizing it, my brain defaulted to its old coping mechanism. I started buying physical books, reading them, and mapping out my own ideas on top of them.
The moment my thoughts made contact with the paper, everything became clear, flowing as smoothly as the ink leaving the pen.
That piece of paper outlined exactly what kind of team I wanted to build, and I used it to plan my next moves. I don’t manage that team anymore, but I am incredibly proud of what we accomplished together. I honestly believe the approach we tried there hasn’t been replicated anywhere else.
Looking back, the reason that team performed so well, and the reason people actually enjoyed working in that structure, was definitely not because I had some special managerial talent. I am not saying this out of false modesty either. It is just the truth. I truly believe that our success came directly from designing the whole thing on paper first. The physical act of writing allowed my mind to surf in the exact direction and at the exact speed it needed to. When I don’t write, the surf is short, and I wipe out on the very first wave. But when I write, I can ride those waves with confidence, share the route with the team, and actually steer us towards a shared destination.
A Gentle Rebellion
I still write today. As a biological organism, I write to learn at my own natural pace. I write to plant my emotions like seeds, hoping to harvest new thoughts and ideas from them in the future. And sometimes, I just write just for the sake of writing. Because it feels good. Like running, like snowboarding, like living. That is why I write.
Writing is the most gentle protest against modern culture’s obsession with speed and productivity.