Is writing on Quora really worth it?

It's definitely worth it.

I have been sane through this pandemic only because I have this platform to express myself everytime I feel batshit crazy.

But it does come at a cost. Its extremely addictive, since I know now that I have 14k people who often read what I write. So every thought in my head translates to me speaking to them, and then I become obsessed with writing it down, not in my diary like I used to do before, but here.

Then I check in often just because seeing the number of views on my answers gives me a high and makes me feel validated and adds value to my life. Nothing wrong in feeling that way except its immensely addictive, and I wish I could just go back to writing in my diary as before, where I didn't have to worry about people reading what I write.

Make no mistake, I am extremely grateful for the validation, but it feels like a drug sometimes, the immense pressure to write everything personal and leave it out for people to read, you feel its killing you, but you just can't stop anymore.

It also is a guilty pleasure since I barely have time to write, from work these days.

The answers that I often write are deeply personal and often traumatic and send me on a spiral of anxiety. Every answer that I write often takes up more than 2–3 hours of my time, even though writing it probably took 10–15 minutes. I dwell on it for a long time, and sometimes, feel exhausted revisiting painful memories, so much so that I often deactivate my account after writing an answer because it takes a huge toll on me mentally.

I hope to get better at this with therapy and time, though. Because I wouldn't be writing what I write without quora. I wouldn’t be writing at all I guess. I would just be thinking, unable to translate my thoughts into words, and just pushing those thoughts deep inside where no one can have access to them, because never did I think of my thoughts as something valuable or worth reading about.

It was only because of quora and its people, that I could convert the tangled mess in my head, into something people can read and relate to, and feel something while at it.

That makes all of the anxiety worth it.

Back to deactivating my account though.