On Writing and Life

Come 2014 and it will be three years since we started Instant Grativacation. Lately, I haven’t been writing much for this site or any other publications for that matter. Part of it stemmed from the fact that I was busy with my day job and didn’t have the time to devote to writing. But something more troubling was happening – I had lost my words.

Perhaps it was writers block, stress, exhaustion or any other number of things that plague us in our day-to-day lives. Whatever it was, I felt like my voice for writing about food, travel and all the other things I have shared here was gone. It made me question whether it was something I wanted to continue doing. Did I no longer love writing? Why did I write to begin with?

I have spent the last couple of months asking myself those questions. I put down my pen and took long walks and looked for the answers in strangers’ faces. I read books like Stephen KIng’s On Writing. I went out to eat without the burden of worrying about what my post would look like after.

To say my search for answers has concluded would be a lie. But what I realized was that the website had become more about content and social strategy. There is a place for strategy, but a certain honesty gets lost in your writing when it is the dominant force behind it. As a writer, the role to some degree is truthseeker and that gets perverted when your sole focus is on likes and page views.

Instant Grativacation was supposed to be a reflection of what was happening in my life. The great adventures, the mishaps and what I was learning and discovering along the way. Overtime it became more about building a site and its traffic. But neither of those things are inspiring and as a result the fun that had once been attached to the site had dissipated and my enthusiasm dimmed. The weight of my own great expectations had become an albatross.

These days I am more focused on being the best writer I can be. If other people enjoy what I have to say all the better. But I want to experience and taste life through an unfiltered lens. I want to explore all the in betweens, because within the small spaces that is where life and perhaps my next great post exists.