Writing as Catharsis

A close friend of mine once remarked (critically) that all I care about is fun, and I would not disagree. The highest compliment you can receive from me is that you are “fun”. In contrast, an assessment that you are “boring” was in my book, worse than say, “evil”.

A few years ago, I travelled to Shanghai for a month on business. Shanghai is a very dynamic and cosmopolitan city, full of energy. I grew to love the city towards the end of my stay. However, the most dominant feeling I had during my stay was boredom.

During my stay in Shanghai, I was bored. I didn’t know a soul in Shanghai. I didn’t speak Shanghainese or Mandarin. I didn’t have the stomach to travel outside of Shanghai by myself, and dining out alone is positively the most depressing thing I can think of (perhaps rivaled only by going to watch a movie by yourself). The month I stayed in Shanghai is the only other time (besides now) in my life that I have felt compelled to write. Usually, I’m too busy living my life to sit down and maintain a blog. Only after a complete shock to my system jolted me out of my comfort zone did I feel the need to engage in writing as catharsis.

My drawing instructor at Michigan once told me that she travels to sketch. When she goes to a new place, everything she sees is new and stimulating to her, and she is motivated to sketch (perhaps the way tourists are motivated to snap photographs). Like her, the utter foreignness of my surroundings compels me to act and my response is to write as a way to “work it out”.