If you’re socially anxious, it would be almost impossible for you to accurately observe a conversation you’re having with someone else, because you’re too focused on neurotically trying to monitor the other person’s reaction to really pay attention to them.
If we treat writing as a form of thinking, we can appreciate its benefits in a way that isn’t focused on objective output. I’ve heard a lot of friends say things like, “Oh, I’ve tried to write more stories, but they weren’t any good.” I think that rewarding writing practices can be focused purely on journaling—on clarifying your lived experience to yourself. What if we wrote to have conversations with ourselves that we otherwise couldn’t have? What if we wrote to keep a record of thoughts that otherwise wouldn’t exist at all?