“I’m going to write today.”

You are setting yourself up to fail; it is as simple as that. Through this one sentence, this well-intentioned phrase, you have set yourself up to fail. As much as you love writing or wish to do it, you will never get far when you go into it with this mindset. The intention is not enough; you need the tools to get further than that intention. And the tool in question is your plan, how you will take things a step further than your intention and turn it into a quantifiable goal.

The mistake

The issue is that you don’t create a plan for the day; you don’t diverge past the initial term of ‘writing’. You keep things vague, and several things may occur as a…

Let me start by acknowledging my bias. I am a fiction writer at heart, I’ve been writing stories since primary school, and it is my greatest ambition in life. Alongside that I’m a fiction reader, I try to read non-fiction as well, but it is fiction that captivates me to my core. In psychology, we always say that a researcher, or human, cannot help but be biased, and so the best that they can do is acknowledge that bias. I recognise my bias. …

Some things are scary to talk about, and that can be for different reasons. It could be something that happened to you, something you did or continue to do. The things that seem the hardest to say out loud are the ones that will bring you the most incredible relief.

I suffered in silence for years, struggling to do the simplest of tasks and feeling like I couldn’t go on. My mind bullied me into not sharing my pain. No one would believe that I was depressed as I didn’t have a reason for it. No one would understand how my eating disorder controlled me. …

I once tried something on, and it fit perfectly — then, I looked at the tag and saw that it was a large.

I didn’t buy it just because of the tag. I didn’t want to admit to myself that I was a size large. I was recovering from my eating disorder, and the weight gain terrified me. I ping-ponged between wanting to be thinner and wanting to be happy at a larger size.

A year has passed, and I’ve bought many things in size L because that’s the size that fits my body and feels good on me. But the weird shame around larger sizes hangs over me; the desire to be a medium slips through the cracks of my carefully constructed self-love. …

The first time I posted an article about my depression, it was incredibly difficult — the idea that people would read this and scrutinise me and my words. That people could deny my experience or base their opinion of me on it. The same happened when I talked about my eating disorder. They’d think I was too fat to have been struggling so heavily; they’d think I was exaggerating about my pain. Talking about my self-harm equated to rendering myself unattractive, forevermore. Talking about my deep sadness felt like labelling myself as an overprivileged brat.

It was difficult each time I uploaded an article, despite the catharsis that my words brought me and the positive comments I received. It got easier, to the point that I would upload without doubt and grow more open in my pain. …

We see it every year as our social media feeds become filled with the same old post, claiming “New Year, New Me”. Haven’t seen that sickening term? You must have better friends on social media.

But whether or not you actively post it, many of us are guilty of the “New Year, New Me” mindset, even when we don’t categorise as such. We go into the New Year with big dreams and ambitions, setting ourselves up to fail before we’ve even passed the starting line. The aims and ambitions we hold aren’t the issue, but rather how we identify them. Those big dreams and ambitions are more than possible if you simply prepare yourself correctly for the race, as well as determine if this is even the race for you. …

I started writing on Medium in May, combining articles published on my own blog (created in January) with Medium-specific content. When I first started, like many others, I had big dreams of earning well for my writing. I published eight articles and ended up with a measly $3.04. It would be easy to give up at that point, but anyone who has wanted to be a writer for years recognizes how long it takes to make money off of it, if ever. …

It scares me to write this article. I’ve written dozens of articles related to my depression and eating disorder, but talking about the root of it all, my borderline personality disorder, terrifies me. I like to think that the stigma is due to the lack of knowledge around personality disorders, the misconceptions held, as then there’s hope. My role in this is to spread awareness and share my experiences with a personality disorder.

When I was diagnosed with BPD, I did the natural thing and Googled it. I read articles and posts telling me that I had a ‘fake’ illness, that I was untreatable, that I was manipulative and that I couldn’t be cured. BPD can’t be cured, but it can be managed, and now I finally understand that. …