I am not writing and I have started to not miss it. It’s been almost three months and there hasn’t been a word out from me, on page or screen.

Writing was a tedious exercise anyway, laborious, always stressful, at least till it was done. The aftertaste was one of doubt, anticipation, along with a sense of relief. To be honest, on the rare occasions that I managed to get something decent out, I even felt a tad happy.

It is this not-writing that is making me less stressed, happier, that I am currently thinking about. Also, about how writing was once a part of one’s life; something one had thought of doing till the very end. It was a job requirement in those long journalism years, alongside the editing work. The writing part, however, was considered as something of huge value, seen and done with a lot of excitement.

Like other desk people, I inevitably ended up judging people, or writers, by their copy. They existed on a spectrum — with ‘gods’ on the one extreme and ‘ordinary mortals’ on the other. Meanwhile, I struggled with my own writing, forever wondering if journalistic writing was merely a job done or art; was it meant only to serve a purpose or could it also be creative.

For all its excitement, journalism can be extremely exhausting and eventually lead to a burnout. It is powered through deadlines like no other work is. We, the journalists, casually use the phrase “you can’t switch off” without realising the harmful impact it has on our mental wellbeing. In my case, it led to a change of job that did not require writing as such. But once in the habit, you are not supposed to quit; writing is supposed to mature with years (of course, there are examples where writers have been unable to match their excellence of earlier years).

Generally, the not-writing is a hiatus for writers that is required for good writing. It is always thought that not-writing, presumed to be no more than a short break, makes you a better writer. There is no not-writing for the sake of not-writing, for good that is. The JD Salingers and Zahid Dars of the world are mad people that no writer wants to emulate. They would rather stay engaged, involved with ideas, their minds overactive to say the least, and, of course, keep reading at all times.

The thinking process is ongoing. To writers, the ideas come in the form of at least one or two fully formed sentences. They know how to take it from there. To me, they have stopped coming in the form of sentences. Initially, there was this sense of fear that I might lose ‘it’ forever. For some reason, burnout perhaps, I have been very gradually forced into this contrarian state regarding writing.

Looking back, I feel that this whole reading and writing business takes you away from so much else that is so important. Like doing nothing, for example. Or taking notice of things — people, plants, seasons — without an agenda. Or cooking food with your heart and mind in it. Or paying more attention to your children, and the neglected house. Walks. Meeting people for the heck of it, not as asides but as an essential function of life.

Then there are other things. What Susan Sontag calls violence of camera or power of a photograph can be extended to the act of writing too, which is presumed to be superior to other works, mostly physical, that humans do for a living.

While it may be difficult yet to challenge the elitism of intellectual labour or writing, writers are under an added pressure: a quantitative measure of readership — likes and shares on social media and/ or number of books sold — has become the sole criterion to determine their worth. Video did not just kill the radio star; in recent times, it has come to supplant the act of writing, rendered it redundant, or almost. Humanity’s collective and willing suicide, some might say. Many do not care, and it’s the many who matter.

Writing tends to digress. Though this isn’t exactly why I was trying to make a case for not-writing. And how does one explain making this case by writing about it? I’m afraid I don’t have an answer to that. All I know is that in writing, this qualifies as irony.

The writer is the director of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan and a former editor of TNS