I have heard that writing is a spiritual exercise. For me, it is a struggle — sometimes a gratifying one, other times excruciating. I have Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, specifically “Orderliness and Symmetry” OCD. When I write, I become obsessed with the spacing between words, or the arrangement of letters in a word. The subsequent compulsive behavior is the same: delete the sentence and start over. I got caught in this loop trying to describe how it feels. I become hyper-focused — in a dissociative way — on perfecting each sentence before I can move onto the next. Some days, of course, are worse than others. This cycle is perhaps most distressing when my mind is teeming with heady thoughts, yet I cannot articulate them in a way that feels right. That a particular sentence simply feels “off” encapsulates the absurdity of the cycle. When I have agency over every letter, space, and word choice, the tyranny of choice becomes stupefying. Then shame sets in; I am wasting time, my most precious resource as a writer. Even a short reflection such as this — an honest attempt at approximating a “stream of consciousness” — has taken me days. Fortunately, it has been less taxing than usual, which is a start. Indeed, this is my first attempt to describe why writing is such a personal struggle. Short writing exercises are my own form of exposure therapy. Now, I’m not sure how to best end my first entry. But I guess sometimes the imperfect words are exactly the right ones.