Last week, I was sitting in the dimly lit bar of a hostel in Amsterdam, where I nursed a tulip-shaped glass of IPA, feeling thrilled to write. It was a child-like thrill, the type that rushes through your body right before ripping open a giant birthday present. And so, like unwrapping a present, I opened up my laptop, created a new document, and found... 

...nothing.

Suddenly, I stared at an aggressively blinking cursor on a blank laptop screen. It occurred to me that, surely, no one would care what I had to say. Everything I tried to write felt inferior. Even the blinking cursor seemed to attest this to me in its annoyingly steady rhythm: Not. Blink. Good. Blink. Enough. Blink.

Ever since that night, I’ve felt stuck.

You could call it impostor syndrome. Or you could call it writer’s block. I guess you could also call it self-doubt, existential dread, or the free-trial-pay-later version of a quarter-life crisis. The label doesn’t matter. All I know is that feeling stuck sucks and that I no longer want to feel stuck.

It’s much like the scene from Lost in Translation when Charlotte – a young, disenchanted philosophy graduate – has a late-night conversation with Bob – a fading movie star who’s equally disenchanted yet older and more nonchalant. They both find themselves at a fancy hotel in Tokyo, questioning their life choices.

“I tried being a writer,” Charlotte says. “But I hate what I write. I tried taking pictures, but they’re so mediocre.”

I've been feeling very much like Charlotte. For instance, here are some of the few scraps I wrote during that night in Amsterdam (read at your own risk):

Phew. Luckily, I didn’t do any of that hogwash. Part of the reason is that I’ve been writing long enough to know that these droughts are a natural part of harvesting the fruits of creativity.

But still, every time a drought riddles my pages, I get terrified. It's like watching a horror movie for the first time. So, primarily for selfish reasons, here are some consolations that have helped me get through these scary droughts – or, at the very least, made them suck less. I hope I won’t be needing them soon, but then again, I know that the next drought could always lurk around the corner.

1.

In an attempt to distract myself from self-doubts, I started binging Ted Lasso, a TV show about, well, Ted Lasso – an American football coach who gets hired by a first-league British football club (soccer, that is). The catch: Ted doesn’t know anything about soccer. And even back in the US, he only coached amateur football teams (American football, in this case).

What Ted does know, though, is that growth and connection are far more crucial ingredients for success than studying rules or tactics. When a critical reporter tells him that he’s being irresponsible, Ted casually drops a wisdom bomb:

I suppose you can apply these words to almost any trade. It’s not about the wins or losses. It’s about doing the best you can. It’s about having someone who believes in you – even when sometimes that person needs to be yourself.

2.

While watching an interview with Finneas and Billie Eilish, I stumbled upon this one line that has been a soothing balm for my itchy scratches of self-doubt.

During the interview, Billie talks about a period of producing HIT ME HARD AND SOFT when they were stuck in a rut: “We felt like, What are we doing? I don’t know how we’re going to do this.”

Basically, their problem was that Billie struggled to share the emotions she was going through, so Finneas couldn’t help her write songs. Finneas, on the other hand, hated making music at the time. He felt he had nothing to say that people could relate to. One day, these disparities culminated in an argument when Finneas said to Billie the line that spoke to me so deeply:

“Just say how you feel, and let’s write a song about whatever you’re scared about feeling.”

And so they did. I suppose neither of them anticipated what happened next. During that period of doubt and vulnerability, they wrote Lunch and Chihiro, two of the most acclaimed songs on the album.

Write about whatever you’re scared about feeling. I suppose I should tape these words on my wall.

3.

The human mind is the worst fortune teller in the entire history of divination. I’ve had days when I felt excited to write, only to choke on the first sentence I typed. Conversely, I’ve had days when I doubted my entire writing career, but once I got started, I sat in the chair for seven hours, full of ideas and inspiration. This also applies to other activities — running, reading, having a difficult conversation, etc.

Ultimately, we never know what will happen. The only real sabotage is not showing up, not giving oneself the chance to find out how life will play out. I suppose it’s an unspoken law of creativity that whatever you think you’ll create today, the opposite is just as likely.

4.

This morning, I randomly remembered the full scene from Lost in Translation that I mentioned earlier. After Charlotte says she hates everything she writes, Bob says:

“You’ll figure that out. I’m not worried about you. Keep writing.”

“But I’m so mean.”

“Mean’s okay.”

Bob is right. It’s okay to be average. When did we start using adjectives like “mean,” “average,” and “mediocre” as insults anyway? And why do people like Charlotte or me obsess over perfection when, ultimately, it’s not even up to us to decide whether something is good or bad?

At the end of the day, all I can control is to keep writing and allowing myself to be an amateur, to be mediocre.

5.

There’s a Zen koan I enjoy mulling over when faced with a seemingly insoluble problem (like feeling stuck). The koan goes like this:

It’s a nice reminder that whatever I think I must do to fill a sieve with water won’t work. That is, whatever I think is the solution to my problem probably isn’t. Moreover, the problem might not be a problem in the first place.

For the past week, I’ve had all these crippling thoughts: I can’t write. How will I ever be able to write again? Well, I apologize for sounding like a fortune cookie, but these thoughts were just that – thoughts. Now, I could’ve kept these thoughts alive by feeding them with more evidence (This sounds stupid, No one will ever read this, Just give up...) But this type of thinking is equivalent to repeatedly filling a sieve with water and watching it pour out again.

Today, I choose the simple-but-not-easy alternative: Letting go of the sieve. Tossing it like a frisbee into the ocean. Treating the thing I’m working on as if it were the first thing I ever created.

6.

I remember reading a newsletter once (alas, I can’t remember by whom) in which the author said something like, “I apologize for the messy newsletter today. I hope I’ll be able to write something better next week.”

On my side of the screen, though, I thought to myself, What the hell do you mean by ‘messy’ and ‘write something better’? This was amazing!

It just goes to show that the worst judge of any product is the person who created it.

I’ll tell you a secret: I don’t love what I have written here. I think it’s mediocre, no more and no less. I’m not saying this to fish compliments. I’m saying this because, in the past, I would’ve whipped myself until I would’ve created something that I would’ve considered flawless. But not today. Today, I trust that someone might find these words useful, even if that’s just the future version of myself.

If future-me ever returns to these consolations, let this very sentence be the testimony that feeling stuck is just a feeling. That it will be all right. And that I can choose to move forward not despite my doubts but because of them.

Notes:

• The full scene from Lost in Translation.
• The Ted Lasso quote appears in Season 1, Episode 3.
• The full interview with Finneas & Billie Eilish.
• I found the Zen koan on the Pacific Zen Institute website. Their koan collection is an abundant source of wisdom.