At times, it feels intrinsically wrong to have any other purpose for my writing and poetry. My notepad is meant for important scheduling and last-minute reminders, but instead I’m writing about how fucked up my life is from the perspective of a refrigerator – and it isn’t even good!

Not necessarily the easiest form of self-expression to share in my opinion, but some lil nasty part of my brain is forcing me to do it anyway. Almost like it knows that expressing this is gonna put me in a newly complex state to generate more questionable writing – you’ve got to say there isn’t really a medium that fuels itself in the same way. If you’ve ever written poetry, you’ve most likely had conflicted moments in a desperation to express your words.

You may feel as if the things you’ve written are not meant for human eyes, that they’re simply born to live and die on the page. I’m able to occasionally power through my fear of judgment and release these deeply internalized feelings upon someone dear to me. Slowly seeing their facs twist in an attempt to understand, almost as if the words had fallen onto the page upside down.

I personally get some kind of strange kick out of this, there’s a potential for my complexities to be affirmed by the people who know me best – but ultimately it’s not really about sharing your work with familiar eyes and more so your own relationship with your unfamiliar words.

I feel that words may be a lot more personal than brush strokes or drum patterns, they’re tied to our fundamental understanding of the world and how we communicate with one another. There’s an added feeling of fear and pretension, because I believe that creative expression isn’t really at the core of literary function.

Almost any form of writing is just a bit embarrassing though, I’m even slightly embarrassed by some of the things I’ve said in this body of text so far, but that’s fine. Words do just require a bit more belief, and they’re also tied to you, so if you don’t fully believe your words it’s almost like you don’t fully believe yourself. Words can’t be misinterpreted as easily as an album’s intentions or a film’s over-arching symbolism.

That’s probably why my poetry tends to make so little sense, because it’s a lot easier to hide behind something that’s been a bit abstracted. You feel a lot more exposed when everyone is able to understand exactly what you mean – because they still might not like it – but If you don’t know what I mean, and I don’t know what I mean, then all of this might have no meaning, so then my work can’t be objectively bad, right?

I guess it depends who’s being asked – but if you asked me whether or not you should share the things you’ve been keeping to yourself for so long, I wouldn’t have an answer. That’s just something you have to be ready for, it can be pretty dangerous to put yourself out there in a time of spontaneous self-confidence.

I’ve been on the wrong end of that upload many times, fragile moments where I’ve had something that I loved to do so much.

Such as rapping into a cam-corder at the age of 16 – sharing it to Youtube trying to build some kind of confidence in the things I care about – quickly feeling it had been a horrible decision knowing how many people had seen it and kept their opinions to themselves – then out of frustration removing it all and smashing my cam-corder, only to feel more embarrassed – but hey, I probably got some good writing out of all that mental turmoil!

I only mention this to express that sharing the stuff you care about is not something to be taken lightly, it can potentially ruin your relationship with that thing if you haven’t done all your internal background checks, and if that’s the case maybe start slow, create an anonymous account where you test it out, or share you work with only the closest people and climb your way down to the general public – or you don’t have to share it at all.

The idea of having to share what you’ve made can become a burden, there’s an added pressure in our current world to put things out there, but sometimes that can kill whatever that thing is for you. It’s sort of like domesticating a wild animal, in your head it happily runs free, but once it’s owned by everyone, it can be easily reduced to lying down and rolling-over for cheap treats.

We all have things we wish we could share, or wish we could do if it wasn’t for internal stop signs – but you’re always able to share things with as many precursors to your actions as you’d like. There’s uncertainty in many of the outcomes and choices we make, but we don’t have to act like there isn’t. For instance, I feel that the poems I’ve shared along with this might be a bit weird and juvenile in the way I’ve written them – & that’s okay.

Whenever you’re looking for that little extra push off the precipice of putting your work or poetry out there  – just remind yourself that you’ll always have the ability to be transparent. You’re allowed to say that this is your first time sharing your writing, art, music, whatever. You can say that you’re not super sure of it but you just want to share it to see what that might feel like. You never have to hide behind complete surety. I think as artists we always want our peers to be in a comfortable enough space to showcase their work, it’s super important.

We kind of owe it to each other to share our ideas because it’s an almost effortless dialogue, it creates a natural form of progress and growth through one another – but it’s more important to look after yourself and your creative voice. Whether it’s a shout or a whisper, please keep it alive and never feel forced to create or share a version of yourself that you don’t believe in.