Art Therapy
2026-05-15
A simple realization I somehow didn't arrive at until just now: this project is self-imposed art therapy.
I remember my time in therapeutic spaces—hospitalization programs, treatment centers—and how art therapy was a basic fixture: drawing pictures, writing little poems, whatever else. When I started designing my website and really getting into blogging, I think my ambitions were more content-focused. After attempting a Substack publication and seeing how current writers create and monetize their work, I became disillusioned by the "marketing mind virus," as it were. I felt like I had to write something that was "valuable" in some kind of objective way, otherwise people wouldn't want to read my work. At the time, Cogito was a private diary; it was a way for me to express my thoughts in that classic therapeutic fashion. I could be as personal and as visceral as I wanted. While trying to write longer and more "polished" pieces, I struggled with them creatively because I felt it was mandatory to hold myself up to some kind of higher self-imposed standard. It wasn't about self-expression. I wanted the writing to be this economically conducive engine, but realized just how out of my depth I actually was.
At the same time, the Cogito practice was still consistent and strong. The lack of judgment and self-imposed expectations allowed me to refine my voice in a way a more stretched-out piece couldn't. I was having a hard time letting myself go, and being okay with the writing's more stream-of-consciousness qualities. I had this naive view that good writing requires elaborate structure, rhythm, and rhetoric. But there was a gap between my own proclivities for research and my own more self-actualized creative ambitions. Those pieces I see with a more academic flair—multiple citations, footnotes, conventional syntax, high-jargon register—I assumed there was an elaborate construction process behind the scenes. Meanwhile, I was just sitting down with a timer, hitting sprints, and not worrying about outlines or consulting any kind of personal notes. It made me feel behind, and at times inferior. I'd see people who got published in places I like to read, and wondered what the gap exactly was. I could read their pieces and appreciate them, but felt like I wasn't "mature" enough to get my own words in there. I like the unconventional and unique voice I have, but I've realized that it doesn't fit into most publishers' idea of what their market is.
So, making the personal website felt like a good solution. If it was going to be in the same place as a more established publication (online), then it made plenty of sense for me to just get a host and spin up my own thing. If I felt like my work had the quality I thought it did to attract a good readership, then I could post it as regularly and as often as I could—then the fruits would bear, and I could vindicate myself regarding this ill-perceived gap. But as I've grown in this project over the last several months, my perspective has changed. I've since stopped comparing myself to people in publications with more extensive marketing budgets. There's no place in that for someone who wants to be an actual writer. You can only keep going if it's something that actually gives you some kind of self-satisfaction. For me, the career-centered ambitions fall flat compared to the joy I get when I come up with a really good line, write it down, wrap it in some creatively stitched context, and send it out.
And that's why it's art therapy more than anything else.
More than that, I can confidently say I'm a better writer today than I was a year ago. My instincts are sharper, and I have less friction between my thoughts and my fingers. I have more confidence in my taste and revision process, and it comes through in the prose in how surgical I can get with my edits. I trust my voice, and know that I always have something to say, even when the words don't feel like coming out. I love thinking in public, showing an epitome of what it looks like to actually be at the page every day. Maybe it inspires people in their creative efforts, I don't know. It can be tough filling in those gaps between the ideation and the actual iteration that comes with a creative process. Burnout is real, and at this point I feel less obligated to write here every day, and more like I'm carving a path in real time. No speculation, no intended outcome—just pure unadulterated trust in the process. Figuring out that next line, that next thought—it's why I wake up every morning, honestly. I wake up excited to see what's going to come out on the page, and even if it's got more of an interlude style like this one, I know it's just one impulse away from that next gem.
Follow-through is a tough thing, and I've felt some stagnation on certain evolutions in the website. I haven't written a new chapter of Somnia in quite some time; my crossword blog lost steam rather quickly, too. It's not like I see those projects as devolving or less important, but I also know that I already do a lot here, and it's kind of a gluttonous thing in its own way. For someone who hasn't "worked" for quite some time, I still feel like a workaholic, albeit driven by impulse and hyperfixation rather than some kind of strategic hustle. I'll always appreciate a good rabbit hole, and while it doesn't always lead to something personally monumental, I still seek that novelty in new ways. It keeps me young, I suppose. Whether it's expression, therapy, or product—it doesn't matter to me; the fun is in the constant play I feel with the language. However it turns up, I know I will at least have done something interesting.
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