Some time ago, while sifting through some old articles I wrote for the writing advice book I never bothered to finish, I stumbled across this passage that I decided to file away for later:

“Write for you first, always. Just focus on getting your thoughts out of your head and onto a tangible medium. You can always sift through later.”

“Write for you first, always” is clean, quotable, and perhaps tattooable. It’s the kind of advice people nod at but rarely follow because it runs counter to so much public-facing pressure. This is why I follow-up with “Just focus on getting your thoughts out of your head and onto a tangible medium”—to ground the ideal in a tactile, actionable process. I’m not writing general empty suggestions like “be profound” or “make art.” Just dump the brain bucket.

This quote of mine reveals the inner mechanic of my entire practice. It’s my creative ethic. I’ve wanted to fight back against the cultural obsession with audience-first content: the platform-perfect posts, the brand-polished paragraphs, the commodified voice that says “optimize before you even discover what you think.” After a decade of giving into that culture for paychecks, I’m rejecting all of that outright.

I no longer give into:

• The pressure to package insight before it’s even formed
  
• The expectation to be immediately coherent, relevant, shareable
  
• The performative culture of writing-as-product rather than process
  

Essentially, I’m reclaiming the messy middle. I want my writing to forever be a work-in-progress, no matter how finished it may read to you or me right now. Writing for yourself is an act of sovereignty, of trust, and of patience. It assumes future-you will know what to do with the mess, and that present-you is worthy of being heard—even if the sentences are clunky.

This advice is more than motivational fluff. It’s a philosophical stance against perfectionism and the commodification of thought, and very much in favor of authentic internal witness. It quietly echoes something very old and sacred: naming something truthfully is to bring it into being. If you write it down, future-you can work with it. But if you never give it form, you’re ghosting your own thoughts.