Writing therapy and people’s perceptions of me

When I began this blog over 2 years ago, back when absolutely nobody knew it existed, I’d begun it to write. I’d write my thoughts, my feelings, the things I didn’t quite know how to talk to people about. It was a kind of therapy, a beautiful, self-satisfying therapy that allows you to express yourself more honestly than you ever could in your head, or to someone else – the words would just sort of write themselves as everything spilled out onto paper.

Lately, I haven’t been writing as much. Mostly because I constantly have other things to do, and I realised that the stress and pressure to write regular posts was taking away from my focus on my studies. So now I’m back to my old “when I write, I post” schedule, even though I know it results in less readership and less views and a less happening blog, overall. I don’t mind that. I have written a little recently – a few reviews for college, one short story for a creative writing competition I participated in, and a few other random thoughts – but today I realised I wanted to just write for me. Sit down and type away, surprisingly fast given the lack of any plan for this post, surprisingly not lacking content as badly as I thought it would. Writing is my best form of therapy, always.

If I’m making this a personal catching-up sort of post, then let me talk about my life a little more. College this past week has been as hectic as it possibly can be, and is only finally beginning to return to normal. I’ve been improving my general awareness a lot – trying to ensure I read the paper more often, researching topics of interest, and most recently, watching Philip DeFranco‘s videos, which I have been binge-watching in every bit of my spare time, and which I love. I’ve also been playing the piano a little more, trying to pick up new pieces (which reminds me of a post about music that has been stuck in drafts for weeks now, owing to a lack of a conclusion. I should really work on that soon.)

One totally new, random thing I did the other day, however, might interest you. I have always been someone incredibly curious about other people’s perceptions of me. I won’t say I always care what they think – I’m an incredibly “do what I want regardless of what people think” kind of person – but it still makes me curious to know how they see me. This links to why my ideal choice of superpower, lame and cliched though it may be, is the ability to read minds. (I have made myself doubly ashamed by mentioning that, as an entire post on this subject lies in my drafts as well, awaiting a little bit of love and some publishing. Oh dear, I’m not doing too well right now, am I?)

Let me not digress further, but actually talk about what I did. Over the past few days, I framed a questionnaire. A simple google form, with about 15 odd questions about me. ‘What do you think is my best personality trait?’ ‘What’s one thing you’d change about me?’ ‘What animal do you most relate me to?’ I wrote the questions, got one person’s opinion on them, and then sent out the form to a number of people. My closest friends, some random classmates. Old friends I haven’t spoken to very often lately, new acquaintances of just a few months. With no discrimination, and one generic message accompanying it, I sent it out.

And the responses have been so great so far. Naturally, I knew that I’d get some negative pointers, and I’m okay with that – I want it! But so many people have loved the idea, told me they’d want to do it to, told me I have guts for sending out something like this (it’s an anonymous form, although some of my friends made it clear it was them), and told me that it’s “the coolest thing (they’ve) heard of in a while.” And beyond this, the responses on the form have given me insights. I feel a little better about the physical features of mine that people appreciated. I know that I need to start speaking slower, as so many people told me that. I felt good about all the nice things they had to say, and I reflected on the criticism that I received. And I feel great.

So now, instead of talking about what people said about me, I’m going to pass this idea over to you. I’ll first reiterate, you need to be open to criticism. Besides, you can always control who you send the form to. But, to the 10 odd people who will read this, if you’re curious like me and think it sounds like a cool idea, why not give it a go? Find out what people think about you, if they’re people whose opinions you value. And let me know how it goes if you do!

(Here is a PDF version modelled on the form I made, in case you want to use it as a template. I’d love to know if you actually use it!)