I have a sudden urge to write. I don’t know what I’m going to write and why I want to write, but I can feel that butterfly sensation in my stomach. I have not felt that in years. Decades rather. Yes, I wanted to be a writer growing up – I was an English literature major in college and pursued a career in screenwriting and filmmaking ever so fleetingly. But that was ages ago. A dream I gave up for the practicality and necessity of making a living and surviving in a strange country as an immigrant, I told myself. But truth be told, writing was too hard. Ask any writer, nobody loves writing. Writers only like having written and even that can be hard, as now you are subjecting yourself to your most brutal critics, completely and utterly naked. You rarely survive.

I remember the countless sleepless nights I experienced when I was a writer wanna-be. The specifics are blurry, but the cringe, the physical pain those memories bring are almost visceral. It didn’t help when my guileless husband (boyfriend at the time) was initially eager to suggest “improvements” to my writing,  to which I bluntly responded that I was not really looking for honesty but rather encouragement, he then overcompensated by profusely praising every piece of writing I put in front of him. It became so obviously repugnant that I ultimately learned to resist the temptation to share any writing at all. The fact that our relationship survived is a pure miracle.

But back then, at least there was a reason for writing – the teenage hormones. I have always been a late bloomer and so those hormones extended well into my twenties. I thought my upbring, my life journey, the pains I went through were so unique that I had to share them with the world. Otherwise I would be suffocating. I HAD TO WRITE. And then what’s ironic is when I stopped writing, when I started actually living my life, I find everyone has gone through those phases. There is nothing unique or grandiose about my life. In fact, it pales against every other life out there. As I grow older, I start to see the passion I felt back then was mere naivete. I really have nothing to say that has not been said before by people who are a million times smarter and more interesting than me.

So why do I want to return to that nightmare of writing all of a sudden? And without even knowing what I want to write. Is it because during this year of Covid, I have saved at least two hours of commute time per day and merely have too much time to myself? Is it that I finally reached a plateau in my corporate career that I needed a creative outlet somewhere else? Or is it a form of mid life crisis? Afterall, I see most of my friends (mostly in their 40s or 50s) are starting some kind of hobby (jogging, yoga, cooking, painting, singing, dancing, vlogging) as if they are prepping for retirement.

One thing I learned over the years is not to ruminate too much. Trapping in my own thoughts drives me insane. The only way to get out of that maze mind of mine and be productive is to take action. So I wrote in my New Year resolution: Do something creative for at least 3 hours a week. I figured that is specific enough (measurable results of 3 hours a week) and vague enough (creative can mean so many different things) that I can probably execute it. And indeed, I started – by writing a book review on the Obama memoir “A Promised Land”. Book reviews are not that creative in particular, but having just finished reading, it is fresh in my mind and I always have so many thoughts when reading sometimes it is hard for me to finish a book, as the thoughts would run away into their own universe that I had to stop and indulge in them. Writing those thoughts down is just a nice way to get rid of that annoyance.

So I sat down in front of my computer and in 2 hours I churned out 2 pages of a book review. My first impulse is to copy and paste that text into my WeChat – that’s my channel into the world these days. Much to my astonishment, WeChat told me that I have exceeded the word limit – I wasn’t even aware WeChat had word limits! Then the responses started to pour in… or the lack of… should I say. People generally are super generous with their “likes” for my travel posts, beautiful sceneries, or food pornographies, when in fact those involve minimal effort on my part. But when I labored for two hours for a piece of writing, very few seem to care: Two pages! My Gosh! That is just way too much! Ok, maybe I exaggerated. I did get a decent amount of genuine comment of encouragement, some suggesting I should write a book, others with more practical advice on where to post longer pieces of writing.

And I took their advice, posting the review on medium.com for the US audience and on 简书 (Simple Book) for the Chinese audience, only to find myself checking the stats on those sites every 5 minutes. “Honey, I got over 100 views on 简书,” I told my husband excitedly. “That’s nothing with over 1 billion population,” he said so matter-of-factly. God bless his soul -- sometimes I wonder if the reason I married this man is just so I can live on earth rather than in my own fantasy land. “Why do you care? You are just writing for fun right?” The ever wise man said.

It is true I never wrote it to gain a following. In fact, once I started reading the popular posts on medium.com, I realized that is the furthest thing I want to do – in order to gain a following, you have to produce content once a week at a minimum and write with some catchy but inherently empty titles like “7 Habits of Deeply Interesting People” or “The 5 Things You Need to Do to Make You Happy”. I can’t help but savor the irony that the people who are reading these posts are probably the least interesting and happy people and the last thing they need is another self proclaimed quick fix. But to say you can write without an audience in mind is an oxymoron. Every writer wants to be read, even when you write a diary, you are hoping some day, the future you, hopefully a more mature, a wiser you would come back to these writings to appreciate and simply enjoy that younger, more innocent, and maybe more turbulent you. Maybe with a tear or two. A smile. Or just a bitter sweet sensation knowing you lived once, not a perfect life, but no way to go back nor do you ever want to go back.

Maybe it is mental masturbation, as the ever wise man suggested. Both are solo acts. Both experience transitory moments of joy only to be replaced by an even deeper void and a stronger longing of insatiability. I am haunted by the eerie similarities between the two, and yet I cannot bring myself to accept the lonely image they evoke.  That can’t be it, can it?!

A glimmer of hope emerged as I recently came upon an article on Wall Street Journal “E-Ternal: New Technology and the Quest to Live Forever”. Columnist Joanna Stern investigated various new technologies that enable us to tell our stories long after we die. One of the most relatable ones is hereafter.ai: After he learned that his father had been diagnosed with terminal lung cancer, founder and CEO James Vlahos created the Dadbot, a conversational avatar to share his life story and unique personality. Now he has turned this into a business, for anyone who wants to share their legacy and pass their memories to their children and grandchildren, all you need to do is record a few interviews and the AI technology can capture the “essence” of you and turn that into a chatbot so when your kids want to talk to you during the holidays long after you are dead, they can simply awake your chatbot.

Incredibly exciting and spooky at the same time when I realized this technology is actually within our reach – it may be primitive right now, but given the speed of innovation, I am pretty sure within my lifetime this technology be can morphed into something so sophisticated that our “digital” self can literally live forever. Along with that came the revelation that to “live” forever, you have to digitize yourself. Whatever is in your head dies with your physical body. But once you externalize your inner self, whether through photos, videos, or writing, that self can remain for generations. This has been true even before the digital age, as the old adage goes “history is told by winners”, because winners tell their versions of the story and make sure the losers’ version never sees any daylight. But the digital age has democratized media and how history is recorded. You don’t need to be a winner to have a voice in social media nor do you need to be “approved” by a publisher to get your writing published. There is no guarantee that just because your voice is out there, it will be heard, but the fact that it is out there at least opens up the possibility that one day it may be heard.

So am I writing because I want to achieve immortality digitally? For someone some day to discover my voice? I don’t know. What I do know is I do not want to be defined by the fact that I’m a Chinese immigrant who came to the US and achieved a certain level of material success, nor would I want to be defined by the fact I am a wife and mother and struggled at both roles, nor would I want to be defined as an executive who gave up her dream in filmmaking and found an outlet for her creativity in the corporate world. I am all those, but I am more than those. I am my complicated, conflicted, messed up, frequently annoying and frustrating, occasionally caring and inspiring self. And I want the world to know THAT.