Published on October 31, 2025 under the Life category.

This morning, I ended up on chsmc.org’s “Applying Pixar’s rules of storytelling to writing” post. At the bottom, he quotes:

No work is ever wasted. If it’s not working, let go and move on – it’ll come back around to be useful later.

I knew I had to come back to this point. No work is ever wasted.

These words have multiple meanings to me, but among them is the pressure I sometimes feel for my writing to be destined for this blog. This is in contrast to writing something like a journal entry which is only for me. I would never say that any of my writing is “wasted”. But I do know how difficult it feels to think that what I write should be here on this blog.

With the ease of publishing on the web, I have felt and feel pressure to write something that could be a blog post. I haven’t written many journal entries, in part because I know they are not something I want to publish. I could be using that writing time to do something for my blog, I reason. Except inspiration doesn’t work that way, I am learning.

I haven’t felt much inspiration to write blog posts recently, for I am in the midst of the excitement and trepidation and anticipation and potential of a change. As such, I have had lots of inspiration to write in my journal, where I can think and process and imagine by myself. Journaling occupies a different space in my life. Journaling is just for me; blog posts, meanwhile, are for everyone.

In using my typewriter, I have once again been journaling. I love the writing I am doing. I am not trying to stick to the blog post form, with a title in mind and a topic to cover. Sometimes I meander between topics such that every paragraph is something new. Sometimes I stare out the window and have an idea that I don’t have much to say about but that I know I want to write down anyway, and so I do. I have found that when I write one sentence, another seems to follow – what seemed like part of an idea is starting to take shape.

I have read and, likely, in the past myself have talked about, the idea of “writing as thinking.” I honestly have never been able to internalise these words. Writing, as thinking? Maybe the best summary is what I touched on at the end of the last paragraph: when you put one sentence on the page, you may realise you have another one to write.

The typewriter feels conducive to writing reflective notes because it occupies a different space in my life. To write on the typewriter, I go to the other room, sit on the floor – for I do not yet have a desk for my typewriter – and start typing. My computers are a room away. When I’m writing, it’s just me and the typewriter.

Alone by my typewriter, I feel that I can be more vulnerable. I can explore topics where I do not yet have a cohesive enough narrative to be able to write something ready for someone else to read.

Some of my paragraphs in my journal have mistakes; the flow is off; the punctuation isn’t quite right. Whereas I actively edit my words when I write on my computer – something one of my friends first observed when we wrote a blog post together – this is not possible on my typewriter. So I do what feels right: I embrace the direction I’m going in. Sometimes I reach a dead end, in which case I start a new paragraph and begin again; other times, I realise there is more to a direction than I first realised.

As I experiment, I get that same feeling when I try to add my own twist to a song I’m playing on the piano: I’m learning. Sometimes I press a note that doesn’t fit and realise that I am further away from the spirit of the song than I want. Other times, I press a note that fits with the chord progression and I end up taking the song in a whole new direction.

I suppose this is the blog post I could imagine myself wishing I had, the one where I say to myself, with the greatest care: writing for yourself is never wasted. Not everything needs to be a blog post.

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