lyfe: writing in blues

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Hallo die Schikeria!
Playing music: Heaven Knows I'm Miserable Now // The Smiths

"I realised my life would be full of mundane physical suffering, and that there was nothing special about it. Suffering wouldn't make me special, and pretending not to suffer wouldn't make me special. Talking about it, or even writing about it, would not transform the suffering into something useful." - Sally Rooney, Conversation with Friends

The other day, I shared one of my latest writing to one of my close friend, after years keeping silent and private about it. Last time she read my writings was about 7/8 years ago so it’s been a while for her, and that was intentional from my side. When it comes to sharing my writings to the people that know me in real life, the perfect expression for it would be 180 degree out of phase. There are moments I was open to share about it to the people that I care, and there are moments that I went on incognito, to the point that I put this blog in private mode. Now, I’m entering into the former phase again, but somewhat in an experimental phase of trying something new. She’s one of the people I trust, and believe that she’s able to give me constructive feedback for improvement.

“Dude, I love the way you express your perspective and your writing’s grown more mature than before. I kept reading it for many times ‘cause it’s so good.”

Personally, I don’t think myself as a creative person; but I learn that whatever idea you come up with and build things around it through various form of media is what’s called 'creative work'. It doesn't necessary have to be a literal creative like doing arts, and it take me some time to process and accepting it. This blog of mine even though I treat it like a personal diary, it is actually in some sense, a form of creative work. The kind of content that I produce is what people called ‘lifestyle blogging’, but I never though of it like that; maybe because I don’t like to be labelled to a particular niche and I don’t think it fit exactly into that. I write whatever that I want to write.

I started writing during early teen years, coming from a place of emotional expression outlet because it’s the only place that gives me space to speak out loud. Everything I wrote back then coming straight from a wounded heart that unable live and feel the emotions, of those unheard cries and screams. Sometimes I do let people know what I feel by throwing emotional tantrum in public when I’d reached my limit, but mostly it’s been tightly lid off from flowing over. I was being told again and again, that I need to be strong, crying is for the weak. The most popular phrase people used to told me whenever I went through something, “you’re overreacting, just calm down.” If you think this phrase have been used primarily for boys/sons, you’d be wrong. There’s another category of people who have been indoctrinated by this particular phrase, that is the eldest daughter, especially coming from Asian background. I genuinely want to know why Asian family have this type of mindset spreading around for generations. I guess that’s going to be another post for another day. Anyway, when I struggled in finding an ear to listen, I found a virtual space to express instead. The only time I’m able to write anything is when I opened up the unspoken words into blog on the Internet. In other words, I started off my writing journey out of being miserable.

“As writers, we often glamorize sadness; after all, it’s what we profit off of. I’ve said to many people that I’m not a good writer when I’m happy. In fact, I think a part of me yearns to self-sabotage anything that brings me joy. ‘It’ll make for a good story’, this part of me thinks. After all, what’s there to write about if you don’t feel a pit fester in the depths of your stomach, clawing its way to your brain as inspiration?” - Amanda Brown, Good Riddance on Substack.

This blog have stand the test of times, seeing content coming from an angsty place. As I grow older, I have outlive most of past miseries, I’ve learned and gained new perspective, and continues to learn and grow out of my cocoon. The only thing that remain constant is the reason why I’m writing in the first place. I tried lessen my writings that comes from ‘emotions up on the sleeves’, and give more thoughtful and purposefulness into the things I express. However, I focused so much changing internally on becoming, I forgot to put that changes into ‘in-sync mode’ externally. Because I started off writing as an emotional outlet, I didn’t think that I would enjoy writing as much when it’s already served its purpose. In this blog alone, I wrote exclusively emotional outburst content and nothing else. I have attempted in writing other than my misery, but most of it is to no avail and remains in draft. Just to clarify, when I said writing, specifically I mean personal writing. Academic writing is another beast on its own, and I’ll probably share my journey on that on another post. Anyway, I tried diversifying and expanding things that I would like to write about in the last 5 years, but boy that was a struggle in itself. That’s where I ask myself, “why do I only able to express or write anything when I’m in blues?”. I guess this is the time I wear my smarty-pants on and try to do some readings on this topic; it’s literature reading and analysis time!

History have shown people like Vincent van Gogh, Virginia Woolf and Sylvia Plath going through madness moments and expressing their creativity juice flowing in their body, which producing the most magnificent piece of arts. Even then, their artistry have been appreciated after they’ve passed away. Adam Roberts have written an essay on this particular topic from the literature lens, where the conclusion of the essay shares similar sentiment like Amanda. In his words, “If depression is a foul miasma wreathing the brain, elegant sadness is more like a peacock’s tail, coloured in blue-gentian and rich marine greens”. As for now, literature doesn’t have a definitive answer for this question.

How about from the perspective of psychology? A lot of people have this perception of creativity flows better when they are depressive, but studies suggest otherwise. It’s more likely that because they going through something and unable to express the emotional intensity and thought processes, creativity process helps give them some clarity over it. One review paper had suggested that people with bipolar disorder that is characterized by periods of mania and depression are about 8% more likely pursue in creative works, and people who have siblings with schizophrenia and autism are more likely have more schizotypal personality traits than the general population (Kyaga 2018). Another studies conducted found that people who received negative feedbacks and people with bipolar disorder was most often associated with creativity (Akinola & Mendes 2008; Taylor 2017). However, this study raised more question rather giving a definitive answer. This is where another study have been conducted in observing correlation between mood disorder and creativity expression, stated that creative people tend to experience more mood disorder than non-creative people (Zhao et al. 2022). This suggest that there is connection between creative people with mental issue, but it doesn’t necessary explain that people with mental conditions such as depression, bipolar disorder and schizophrenia are more creative because of it.

In other words, creativity do help people with mental issue expressed and understand better the complexity that they’ve experience. That would be a reasonable lens to look at on why I started writing out of misery in the first place. One study that emphasize siblings with schizophrenic patients have a tendency to have schizotypal personality traits makes sense to me because one of my siblings do have schizophrenia. When I told about this to my sister who's dealing with schizophrenia, this is what she said to me, 

"Kak, that's a definitive sign for you to go therapy. You're just as messed up as I am." 

Welp, not going to argue with her about that hahaha. With that, I guess if I’m going to try write things beyond my misery, the way I have to do it is to hone writing skills in other topics that I’m interested in. Let’s just say this post in itself is a one step forward in achieving that potential, and hopefully my writing flows better in future, and probably signing myself up for therapy session.

Here, I provide some refences that I've used aside the ones I've linked along the post and any further reading for curious people who wants to dig deeper:

1. Nittle N. (May 19, 2025). The surprising connection between depression and creativity. Very Well Mind. Retrieved from [here].
2. Stone D. (October 08, 2020). Why creative people are more prone to depression. Arts Hub. Retrieved from [here].
3. Lehrer J. (October 19, 2010). Feeling sad makes us more creative. Wired Science Blogs Frontal Cortex. Retrieved from [here].
4. Hammond C. (June 02, 2017). The puzzling way that writing heals the body. BBC. Retrieved from [here].
5. Kaufman S.B. (October 03, 2013). The real link between creativity and mental illness. Scientific American. Retrieved from [here].
6. Robinson-Kiss S. (September 02, 2020). Depressed and productivity? Psychology Today. Retrieved from [here].
7. van Schneider T. (June 02, 2016). Does depression drive creativity? House of van Schneider Blog. Retrieved from [here].
8. Garcia A. (July 30, 2025). Creativity and madness: The science behind this relationship. Mental Garden's Substack. Retrieved from [here].
9. Patti A., Merola G.P., Benedetti D., Bozza B., Pitt G., Pecoraro V., D'Anna G., Minotti G., Ballerini A. & Ricca V. (2024). Creative minds: Altered salience as a bridge between creativity and psychosis, a case-control study. Journal of Creative Behaviour 58(4): 537-545. doi: https://doi.org/10.1002/jocb.678.
10. Thorp C. (May 20, 2020). How boredom can spark creativity. BBC. Retrieved from [here].
11. Collias K. (N.A.) Boredom and creativity. Knowledge Without Borders Organization. Retrieved from [here].
12. Davis J. (June 30, 2022). The unexpected value of boredom for well-being and creativity. Psychology Today. Retrieved from [here].
13. Mata W. (April 25, 2025). Put down your phone! Why boredom can be powerful for our brains. The Standard. Retrieved from [here].
14. Zeißig A. & Pannasch S. (2023). Being bored, happy or focused - which is best for creative thinking? How different emotional state influence creativity. Journal of Boredom Studies 1: 1-25. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7712793.