Hopeful and Hopeless, at the Same Time.

I’ve been staring at this page not knowing what to say. Yet I know no one’s telling me I have to. I stopped for a month, but without writing the hours feel like a weight, a burden.

“What do I do now?” It’s gnawing at my insides. When I don’t feel there’s anything else out there to do, and start doom scrolling, or falling asleep at my desk, I feel resigned to it; “I’d better write.”

But wait, why write if the investment of 20 hours per post isn’t getting much response? What’s the return on my emotional and creative effort?

Sometimes, it simply feels good to write; the words flow, I get into a state of alignment inside. Maybe that’s one way to measure “a good outcome”.

Yet I hear this niggly unquiet voice that asks, “What outcome? Your written words only matter to a small handful of readers.”

And that’s where hopelessness creeps into my thoughts: “It’s hopeless. I doubt myself, rewrite the same thought again and again, and feel like the whole effort is nothing more than chasing after the wind.”

It’s hopeless, as my own doubt echoes back at me. The static number of readers is my failure to connect and work the algorithms. Maybe it’s my insecurity, and measuring the wrong outcomes.

And yet, there’s a small hope. Things might improve, even if I can’t see how. There’s a tiny bit of optimism, and a still small voice that maybe the future holds more than I can imagine. “What if I don’t know the quiet ways people value me that they simply never say out loud?”

It’s strange to admit that I can feel hopeless and hopeful at the same time about writing again.

F. Scott Fitzgerald once said, “The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function.”

A “first-rate intelligence”? I’m not sure I measure up to Mr Fitzgerald and his ilk, but there’s times that I can be disappointed in someone and love them. I can understand where someone’s behavior comes from and be hurt by them. Writing, I can hold hope and yet feel hopeless.

My human filter sees things not as they are, but as I have perceived them to be. This compels me to choose sides. To frame things as success or failure, worthy or unworthy, hopeful or hopeless. And every New Year, resolutions tend to do the same thing. Did you succeed? Or did you fail? Resolutions are outcome-driven and binary.

But my wholeness doesn’t come from drawing those black and white dichotomies. It comes from acknowledging that dissonance can coexist inside me. That I can be hopeful and hopeless. Confident and uncertain. Strong and fragile. And that none of those truths invalidate the others.

Writing is not success or failure, but part of the practice of my life. I want to be attentive to the process, as to how writing builds a scaffolding in me to hold opposing ideas and accommodate opposite emotions.

As 2026 begins, I still feel both hopeful and hopeless about my writing. And oddly, I think that gives my inner life more depth. I’m only just beginning to understand my emotions, and allowing space for more than one at a time feels like growth.

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See you next week,

Grayson

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