I’m Bad At This

I used to be good at writing. I used to get an idea in my head, start the first sentence, and then the rest of the blog post or essay or poem would fall out of my fingertips faster than I could keep up. It was awesome. I didn’t have to try. I could just word vomit out a rough draft of something and then I’d look at it and be like, holy shit, this isn’t vomit at all. But now? Now it’s like 95% barf and 5% things I think are good.

For the past few years, when I try to write something I write a few sentences and hit a wall. I’ll be like, ooh, here’s an idea, how fun and then thirty seconds later I’ve run out of steam and I’m staring at my journal or the cursor. Panic creeps in. Then doubt. Then frustration. And then I give up and walk away because I’m tired of trying to push through this stupid mental block I have. And also I’m a little bit of a baby about it because I’m used to writing being easy and fun and now it’s hard and not fun. Boo-hoo.

Even this post started as like three different things. Three different one-liner jokes to open a piece about how I don’t know how to do this anymore. Ooh, look, a metaphor! Cool.

After several years of being like, what the fuck is wrong with me and why can’t I write anymore, I think I’ve figured it out:

My sense of humor followed in my dad and brother’s steps and committed suicide (You may not find that funny, but know that I find it hilarious). It jumped ship. It saw how my life was going and then it saw how the world was going, and it went, you know what? Fuck this. I’m out.

What really pushed it over the edge was having to leave classroom teaching in January of 2023. Not only did I lose a huge part of my identity, the job I loved the most in the world, and the dream I’d been carrying for years…but I lost access to the funniest group of human beings: teenagers.

Being a high school teacher is one of the easiest ways to stay silly. Sarcasm is their default operating setting and their cognitive development level is set at little shit. You have to be a little funny in order to keep them engaged. It’s basically doing stand-up for a captive audience whose sense of humor is stuck on that’s what she said jokes.

It was great for me. Because not only are they sarcastic, they often don’t mean it. They’re not being malicious, they’re just adding a little salt. It’s safe to be sarcastic back to them, because you’re not being malicious either. Everybody is just being a little bit of an asshole because it’s safe to be a little bit of an asshole. (Of course, there are kids and adults who are actual assholes, but it’s really easy to spot them. They’re the ones that no one else likes. They use words like “alpha” and “female” and generally have the disposition of a crusty sock in a teenage boy’s gym bag.)

But then I left classroom teaching, and I was alone a lot, and a fair amount of the adults I was around were sarcastic but meant it. I had no one to be fake-mean to, and so my sense of humor gave up.

I mean, the world has also been hurling itself towards fascism and total destruction, which is not as much fun to joke about as, say, my father suing me for $100,000,000 (may he rest in pain, or whatever it is you say about shitty people who’ve died).

I didn’t write a complete draft for years. I barely wrote more than a sentence or two. I had maybe three blog posts in that time that were attempts at finding my way back, but I couldn’t get into the swing of it because nothing was funny and everything hurt. Stuff continued to happen to me that was writing-material worthy, but I just couldn’t find the funny in it. I was often too tired to laugh at the bullshit, and that was alarming.

So what changed?

Well, I got my uterus taken out in September of 2025. I mean, that didn’t help my sense of humor but it did get rid of a giant tumor and also my uterus. (My fibroid was twice the size of my uterus and clocked in at 15cm long. I grew that! All by myself!! IN THREE YEARS!!)

No, what really helped was deciding I needed to put myself back into the world in ways where I wasn’t the one facilitating. I needed to let go of control. So I applied for a few jobs and started hanging out with a new group of people, and then, and THEN, I decided to take improv classes.

I have been a theater kid since I was 6 years old. I love performing. I thought to myself, sure, this is weird and you might be the oldest person in the room, but you love being a little gremlin and you need to have more fun and silliness and play in your life. It felt really freeing to be bad at something again, and to be bad at something with a bunch of other people who are also bad at something. I wasn’t worried about being good. I just wanted to have some fun.

You know what? It’s working. I’m having a blast, and with the silliness that is improv, I’m finding my words again. I’m not as good of a writer as I was–I mean, I’m five years out of practice, so that makes sense. But I’m finding my way back. And each time I sit down to push through the brick wall, it get’s a little bit easier. I’m more comfortable with being bad. And the more comfortable I am being bad, the sooner I’ll be good.

My therapist would be so proud.