How and why I got back to writing
I started watching this Huberman Lab podcast with Steven Pressfield recently, got about 40 minutes into it, and then heard this bit - roughly 4 minutes long - that made it incredibly, painstakingly clear why I need to write, why I have been procrastinating on it for years, and why I can’t procrastinate on it anymore.
I’m attaching the transcript of these 4 minutes below, but I highly suggest you watch the piece as video communicates way more information than text. It might help you grasp something similarly important about yourself.
You can find my reflections on my own case (why I need to write and why I’ve been putting it off for years) further below, after the transcript.
== transcript start ==
I think we do all have some sort of calling, and we know it.
If we could somehow put somebody in here and say, “I’ll give you three seconds! Tell me what you’re supposed to be doing!” It will pop into somebody’s head. They’ll go, “Oh, you know, I’ve always wanted to be a motorcycle…” whatever.
But then that whisper urge to do this thing is immediately countered by this force of resistance, because it’s trying to stop us. It’s the devil. It’s trying to stop us from being our true selves and becoming self-realized, self-actualized, or whatever.
So resistance will immediately say to us:
Like if you were to say, “Oh, I want to have a podcast and I want to talk about science.”
Immediately, resistance would say, “Who are you, Andrew, to do this thing? I mean, you’re a professor at Stanford. You don’t have any experience doing this. Not to mention, it’s been done a million times by other people. They’ve done it a thousand times better than you. Nobody’s going to give a shit. You’re going to put this out, you’re going to embarrass yourself. You had a certain level of prestige at Stanford. Now you’re an idiot.”
It’s going to be that voice, right?
[Andrew] Some people actually said “Stanford’s not going to like it. Why would you do this? You’re tenured at Stanford. What are you doing? You’re funded. Your lab’s publishing well.” One of those people was my father, who’s also a scientist.
And the true part here, the really kind of interesting part, is a lot of times those voices will be the voices closest to us: our spouse, our father.
So that voice of resistance will come up.
In addition, resistance will try to distract us. It’ll try to make us procrastinate. It’ll try to make us yield to perfectionism, where we noodle over one sentence for three days. Fear, all of the other things will stop us.
So, many people live their entire lives and never enact their real calling.
But that calling, whatever it is - to be a writer, a filmmaker, whatever it is - if we don’t do that in our life, that energy doesn’t go away. It goes into a more malignant channel. It shows itself in addiction, alcoholism, cruelty to others, abuse of others, abuse of ourselves, porn - you name it. Any of the sort of vices that people have.
Because that original creative, divine energy that really wants to be “The Odyssey” or something like that - if we yield to our own resistance and don’t evolve that, then bad things happen.
On the other hand, if we do follow that, we open ourselves up to becoming who we really are.
== transcript end ==
After hearing this, I realized that I need to write, and I can’t not write anymore.
I’ve been receiving this calling for many years but either suppressed or neglected it, and bad things did happen.
Suppression came in the form of comparing writing to building startups. I had thoughts like “What? Writing? How are you gonna make money by writing? You’ll never make much, even if you have a Substack or something. And what will you have to show for it? Compare a startup founder who builds companies with a pesky blogger who writes articles online - who would you rather be?” And so on.
Neglect came in the form of procrastination and indefinitely putting it off. “Oh, I don’t have enough time now, I need to work on the business. Oh, this time I don’t have enough energy; I don’t feel that well.” Etc. Procrastination manifested as collecting tons of ideas for blog posts but never publishing anything, or spending hours designing my blog instead of releasing the first post.
In my case, bad things were the following - addiction to Netflix and binging on TV shows (escapism), health issues, and mood issues. It’s hard to trace everything back to this cause of course, but I do believe there’s a relationship there - as not doing something deeply important for a human has a price in terms of stress and psychological issues, which then influence the physiology.
The worst one of those bad things was that I ost my mojo, my energy, my fire, my will to do things. It felt like I aged 50 years in five. I felt… heavy. Slow. Old. Like the activation energy that I once had disappeared. I wouldn’t jump out of chair anymore; I’d get up, and rather slowly. It took me enormous effort to do things, or, rather, to make myself do things.
But the calling never went away. It faded for some time, but resurfaced later, louder. And after I watched this podcast, I realized that I can’t keep ignoring it. Can’t. Won’t.
So, here I am, starting my 8th blog. I don’t have any particular goal for it, like I had for the previous ones. But I do want to explore this writing thing and see where it takes me. And I will.
Tenerife, Spain
30.12.25
VS