Written By: Adam Abramowitz

We can take the idea of introspective writing and drive our thoughts, and our words, to an extreme place. A place where the answers we are looking for are no longer coming from a piece of paper, or a document on screen.

For a good length of time, I found myself caught in a debilitating cycle of isolated emotion. Caught in a creative pen of pure introspection, in a futile attempt to distance myself from “me”.

My writing style had adopted a completely illogical approach to achieve distance, because in the act of creating, I was only directing my energy inwards. It became impossible for me to distance “myself” from “me”, and the daily writing habits I had implemented acted like a noose on my own development.

Finding introspection for ourselves is half the battle, the other half, is being willing to share it. To output the emotions, ideas, and thoughts towards people who can offer us a new lens of perspective. A group of people who can help affirm our ideas, challenge our beliefs, or assimilate with our own passion to drive our will and our lives forward.

What I failed to realize, in pursuit of my own creative exploration, was that I didn’t allow my thoughts, feelings, or ideas to be heard.

I am finally realizing that a lesson learned in life holds no value in the moment of receiving it. It seems that I am only able to fully process the weight of my own discovery when I can remove myself from the process of introspection.

Unfortunately, the project I have been working on the past nine months had been solely dependent on my own ability to look inwards. My creative output had been fully introspective, in the form of written thought…

The book I have been writing has relied heavily on thoughts and feelings in pursuit of a few questions:

“What are artists thinking? What are they feeling as they try to birth a portrait of themselves into the world? Are they regular people? Do they deal with questions of existence? Questions of love? Do they experience pain in the process of coming to terms with who they are, and who they want to be?”

The goal has been, and continues to be, to capture the transparent truth (my own truth) of an artist trying to create something valuable for the first time. Detox, Recovery, and the Pursuit of a Dream

I started writing the book before I knew the amount of dedication being a writer would require. I wrote only when the whim of inspiration hit me. Eventually, the obsession to write consumed me, as did the need for understanding. I looked to other people who had created, and found myself learning through their experience. One habit learned that I began to implement: write every day.

As I challenged myself to write, I found benefit in the form of ideas and inspiration. Getting my thoughts and ideas out on screen provided me with introspection on myself. Introspection that allowed me to view my thoughts and feelings as something tangible. Over the next few months, the daily writing habit had been magnified to focus solely on self-discovery. I wrote to challenge my own perception on reality. I wrote to try and find answers to the way I was feeling and the significance of the people, places, and things in my life. I wrote to find something valuable in the confusion that was my own emotion.

For months, nearly everything I wrote was about me. Not just my perspective, but writing out what was going on in my head. I began to live a motto: Just “think” on paper. A motto I still implement today, but not as forced. For a long time, I thought “thinking on paper” was “feeling on paper”. I have learned, finally, that the emotion in a scene is set with my words; it doesn’t need to be how I’m feeling every time I sit down to write.

I began to use my creativity as a coping skill to escape myself…the problem was, because the book I have been writing is a real-time memoir, I was escaping INTO myself. For a time, I found no relief from the work I was doing, but still, I told myself it had to get done…I wanted to challenge myself to write.

It took a close friend telling me, “You need to stop trying to understand everything” for me to realize that I had been digging too deep into the depths of my own “self”. So deep, that I had found myself stuck, unable to move past some of the thoughts and emotions that I was magnifying on a daily basis.

This friend had given me something that I was unable to give myself. He had given me his perspective. He had given me his opinion on the state of my mind. I was finally given the answer I needed. An answer I would have never found if left to my own devices.

The development of this website has been a result of wanting to share the things I have learned, and to help people who feel the same way I do. To do for others what my friends have done, and continue to do, for me.

I reached a place in my writing where I was unable to shoulder the weight of my own thoughts, beliefs, and ideas within myself. Before the idea for a social media platform began to formulate in my head, I took action to share my writing. It was a response to the isolation I was experiencing in my own mind. An isolation that developed because I felt that  the communities I had been involved with were unable to align with my own thoughts on how meaning and purpose can be developed for someone who is willing to challenge themselves.

I have taken many things out of the places I have been, and have discovered in the process a means for developing something that has worked for me, and I believe it will work for others.

For several months I had felt unfortunate that the groups I have been involved with no longer provided me with the purpose I so devoutly crave. No longer provided me with the answers I was searching for.

The process of introspection and focus on myself, with the help of friends, has awakened me to a state of mind that allows me to carry my set of beliefs and principles to any environment I find myself in, and, a month ago, my isolation ended.

Now, I can sit in rooms full of people and feel comfortable being different.

I finally understand that the tribe I am looking for is all around me, and they’re called friends. Now, I view any group as a collective of potential allies.

My philosophy is simple, every single one of us is special, and its OK to feel different. If I didn’t feel different, if I hadn’t felt like there wasn’t a community sufficient enough to provide me something that was missing, I wouldn’t be here now, writing this essay on what I have learned.

I have found the thing that makes up a community is people, and I know plenty of people who think, act, and feel the way I do. Although there is no meeting place, or social platform for us to congregate on, eventually, there will be…

From My Minds Eye to Yours