16.09.2026 Diary XVI Writing

16.09.2026 Diary Page XVI

One should either not begin or finish. But sometimes writing is the only place between beginning and finishing.

I have been writing for sixteen days.

At the top of my first entry I wrote “one should either not begin or finish.” While writing that sentence I was actually a little afraid. Because I am someone who starts and cannot finish. Half-finished hobbies, half-finished notebooks, half-finished plans. I thought this diary would be one of them.

It has been sixteen days. I am still writing.

I do not want to tell this as a success. But I do not want to let it pass unnoticed either.

The blank page

The hardest moment of writing is perhaps the first sentence, for everyone. For me it is the moment before the first sentence.

Sitting in front of the blank page, a lot goes on in my head. So much goes on that none of it lands on the page. One idea comes, before I write it another comes, then while I try to join the two the first is lost. The page stays empty, my head stays full.

As someone with ADHD I know how hard starting is. What we call task paralysis shows up in its purest form in writing. I know what I will write, I want to write, but my hand freezes on the keyboard.

In these sixteen days I noticed one thing: I can start when I do not wait for the perfect first sentence. I write today's date. Diary Page and a number. Then the simplest sentence in my mind. “Today I stared at the wall.” “Monday. I am tired.” “The weather had changed this morning.”

The first sentence may be bad. But the page is no longer empty.

Once I start writing

Then something happens.

One sentence calls another. Thoughts begin to come in order. Those ten things turning in my head at once fall into a line as they land on the page. Which one matters, which one is noise, I notice while writing.

For me writing is another form of thinking. When I think inside my head my thoughts are scattered, fast, unfinished. When I write they slow down. I have to finish a sentence. I have to take an idea to its end.

Sometimes the subject I start writing about and the subject I finish are not the same. I start with a leaf and arrive at what I carry myself. I start with a wall and arrive at the kinds of tiredness. I do not plan this. The writing takes me there.

This is perhaps the good side of hyperfocus. Once inside, hours flow, the coffee goes cold, the world falls quiet.

When I think inside my head I cannot hear myself. When I write I can.

Writing to be understood

At the start of the diary I wrote that it had a few readers, and that this both relieved me and unsettled me. Between wanting to be seen and being afraid of being seen.

After sixteen days this dilemma is still there.

But one thing has changed. Now while writing I think first not of the reader but of myself. Do I understand this sentence? Did I describe this feeling correctly? Am I really saying what I am saying?

I wrote that I had failed the class on being understood. Maybe writing is taking that class again by another road. Understanding myself first, even if others do not understand. And once I understand myself, finding the right words to explain to someone else.

Making the invisible visible

In this diary I have often talked about invisible things.

Invisible labour. Invisible tiredness. Invisible worth. The invisible things inside while staring at the wall.

Writing makes them visible. Even if no one reads. When I write something it is no longer only inside my head. It stands on a page. Dated. It can be looked back on.

As someone with ADHD my memory has always betrayed me. I quickly forget what I thought, what I felt, what I noticed. Because I do not feel time, I cannot see the difference between the me of a month ago and the me of today.

This diary becomes my memory outside. I can look back at the me of sixteen days ago. And there I find a me that I had forgotten.

The body of writing

There is also a side of writing that has to do with the body.

When I write my shoulders loosen. My breathing slows. When I write at the end of an angry day, my anger lands on the paper and my body gets a little lighter. When I write on an evening when I am tired, naming the tiredness makes it a little more bearable.

I am not saying this as something scientific. It is only so for me.

What I do not want to let go of

In the entry I wrote after the leaf I had asked what I should let go of and what I should keep carrying.

Today I have an answer, at least one: I want to carry writing.

I want to lighten, let go of, slow down many things in my life. But not these pages. They do not become a burden to me. On the contrary, they become a place where I can put burdens down.

Maybe one day I will leave this diary too. I will add one more gravestone to my hobby graveyard. I do not know this and I am no longer afraid of it.

Because every page I have written will stay written.

The sixteenth page

Sixteen days ago I wrote that I opened this site to save myself.

Did I get saved? No. I am still tired, still scattered, still late, still staring at the wall.

But I found something. A place where I can talk with myself.

And sometimes being saved is not getting out of somewhere. It is finding a place where you can talk with yourself.

Tomorrow I will write again. Maybe with a bad first sentence.

But I will write.