I like writing. It's fun. It's a way to express myself creatively. But lately I've been dissatisfied with all of my ideas, and I didn't know why until recently.
I'm 18 years old. I've been homeschooled all my life, and in about 6 months I will attend college. A few months ago, my family moved from a small town to a big city, yet my life is still very insular. Despite having profiles on several social media platforms, I have very little social interaction with my peers.
For at least a year, I've been preparing for college auditions on my primary instrument, the cello. This was a very effective distraction. Now that all of the auditions are over, though, I find myself bored a lot of the time, even though I'm filling my time up. Even though my cello teacher assigned me new repertoire to work on, a very big motivational part of my life is gone.
An online social life isn't enough for me. I may be part of the iPhone generation, but I crave face-to-face contact. Social media is amazing and I won't hesitate to exploit its strengths; it just doesn't give me enough. Call me old-fashioned, but I like spending time with people.
I'm not just dissatisfied with my writing -- I'm dissatisfied with my life, or rather my lack of a meaningful social life. Online I can't share all of my deepest secrets, lest the person I'm chatting with be a serial killer. There's nothing that could identify me on my Wattpad page, which is both a blessing and a curse: a blessing, because no one can find me and stalk me (or worse); a curse, because nearly all of my interactions here are so impersonal that I want to cry.
One thing that makes it harder for me to make friends is that I would rather have a few very close friends than many acquaintances. From my outsider's perspective, looking at the lives of my peers, it seems to me that many of them want the opposite, or at least something very different from what I want.
I know that I'm privileged in many ways. I'm white, I'm from a middle-class family, I'm attractive, I'm reasonably intelligent. I'm not discounting any of that. My point is this: we humans always want what we don't have, and in many cases what we can't have.
I'm not going to give up writing. In fact, I'm going to try to do more starting now!
