I have, at various points in my life, convinced myself that I would stop writing.

This, of course, is a lie. A delusion. A momentary fit of self-pity dressed up as a decision.

Because the truth is—I don’t know how to stop.

I have tried. I have stared at a blinking cursor and thought, What’s the point? I have drafted essays, poems, half-finished rants at two in the morning, only to let them rot in the purgatory of my Google Drive. I have hit “publish” on blog posts that disappeared into the void, unseen and unacknowledged, like a whisper in a crowded room. And still—still—I write.

The Myth of the Audience

There’s a particular kind of hunger that drives writers. A need to be read, understood, witnessed. We tell ourselves stories about audience and impact, about the invisible readers who might stumble upon our words and feel something shift inside them. We imagine the quiet nod of recognition, the saved quote, the moment of resonance.

And when that audience does not materialize—when our words are met with silence—it feels like a kind of betrayal. Why am I doing this if no one cares?

But here’s the thing: someone is always reading. And sometimes, that someone is just me.

Writing as a Time Capsule

I once found an old notebook from my teenage years, filled with the kind of melodramatic, angst-ridden poetry that only a 16-year-old could write. It was atrocious—full of unnecessary metaphors and a staggering overuse of the word “shattered.” And yet, it was also… familiar. I could see exactly what I was trying to say, even if I hadn’t quite learned how to say it yet.

And in that moment, I felt something unexpected: gratitude.

Not embarrassment. Not regret. Just gratitude for the younger version of myself who, even then, was trying to carve meaning out of the chaos.

We don’t just write for others. We write for the future versions of ourselves—the ones who will look back and say, Ah, so this is who I was. This is what I believed. This is what mattered to me.

The Freedom of Writing Without an Audience

Ironically, there is a kind of magic in writing when no one is reading.

When you stop worrying about engagement, clicks, and validation, your writing becomes braver. You experiment more. You take risks. You write the things that scare you, the things that might be too raw, too strange, too specific. You stop performing and start telling the truth.

The most honest things I’ve ever written are the things I was convinced no one would ever read.

And sometimes, those are the things that resonate the most.

Maybe It’s Not About Who’s Listening

I don’t know if writing has to be seen to be worth something.

Maybe writing is like sending messages into space, not knowing if they’ll ever reach another planet but sending them anyway, just in case.

Maybe writing is like keeping a lighthouse burning, even when no one appears on the horizon—because you never know.

Or maybe writing is like breathing. You don’t do it because someone is watching. You do it because it keeps you alive.