I am sitting on a sofa on the mezzanine floor of a car repair shop, looking down at a man typing on his keyboard. A moment earlier, he accepted my car for an airbag replacement.

I brought my laptop with me, so I’m tapping away at the keyboard too. On my way to the garage, I had the idea to write a piece about.. writing. In recent days, this topic has taken on special significance for me.

Three and a half years ago, in June 2022, a memorable month for me, several important things happened that would affect my future (which I was not yet aware of at the time), including the emergence of the habit of daily writing.
I read Julie Cameron’s book The Artist’s Way, in which the author encourages daily dumping of thoughts, writing a few pages of text. The subject matter and style are not important because the essence is the act of writing itself, not the assumption of writing something specific. The point was simply to give vent to my thoughts, to allow them to find an outlet in an unrestrained way and take the form of text. To materialise. This activity became a regular part of my mornings and allowed me to look at what was lying in the recesses of my mind.
I believe that this writing, which I did regularly for two years, was of considerable importance to the whole process I am still undergoing: clarifying the dark deposits lying in my soul, releasing the emotions that catalysed at a difficult but necessary turning point called burnout.

Exactly two years later, in 2024, also in June, I began my therapy and that was when I finally felt that my writing should take on a more structured form. I sometimes laugh that the hard work began, so the writing had to take on a different structure. I felt that something had to come of it, that the result of putting letters and words together should be a thought that I could pass on.
I had been running a photography blog for several months at that point, but the turning point came when I started writing a novel.
At first, I wrote very regularly and a lot, without a detailed plan, completely intuitively. After some time, I took advantage of a writing consultation with Magda Genow, from whom I received a lot of valuable comments. Taking them into account, I began to sketch out new pages of my book.

And then came the spring of 2025 when, as a result of my “adventures” related to (professional) burnout, I stopped working. I was unable to pick up a camera, go into the studio, or talk to clients. I had been in therapy for several months, and the moment came when I could no longer make changes in my professional life while remaining in the same pattern. I needed a break and some distance.
During that time, I focused on writing about (professional) burnout. I put the word “professional” in brackets because, in my opinion, it was primarily a life burnout, which first manifested itself at work but did not originate there.
I wrote several articles on this topic, including a publication in Ślązag (you can find them in “burnout in freelancing” category). For two months, I analysed myself very deeply in relation to this phenomenon, approaching burnout from different angles. Needless to say, this writing was primarily therapeutic for me. Putting my thoughts down on paper and working on the text forced me to think about the subject very thoroughly. I was aware that precisely naming my experiences would help me close this chapter and distance myself from it. And that is what happened.

At the beginning of winter 2025, I felt that I also wanted to publish “essays from life” on my blog on various topics, not necessarily related to photography and life with photography.
I also became ready to write not only under the banner of my own blog but to reach a wider audience with my words.

Although everything I mention above looks quite good, like a cool adventure and a completely new direction in my life, it was only a few days ago that a sentence appeared that is a game changer for me.

What I have been struggling with in recent years, which intensified cruelly during my burnout and which still rings in my ears, is a feeling of powerlessness and ineffectiveness. I will not elaborate on this topic here, but this belief is one of those that has become acute in my life in recent years.

And now, in white letters, the sentence appears: WRITING IS A SENSE OF AGENCY.

These words were spoken in Dariusz Bugalski’s K3 podcast by Maja Jaszewska, who was talking about creative writing (episode 254).

Bang!

An inner sense of agency is the foundation for effective action, which translates into concrete results.

I realised that my adventure with writing had an additional, extremely important function. It allowed me to be effective at a time when the ground was slipping away from under my feet and it seemed to me that I was no longer able to do, achieve, arrange or, as a consequence, change anything.

I was not aware of this. The seemingly simple discovery of recent days that putting words together is entirely up to me and that when and what I write is my autonomous decision has restored my sense of agency.

Going further, my writing proved effective, as, for example, a series of articles on (professional) burnout generated numerous responses from readers, discussions, and several proposals resulting from them.
In view of these facts, I had to revise my categorical assertion about my own incompetence and ineffectiveness and accept that this belief is not true. And even if I still feel it – because it concerns very specific aspects of my life – it can no longer spill over onto my whole self.
I have always been very critical and demanding of myself. These are traits of perfectionism.
So it’s time to debunk another unsupportive belief. And I’m doing it through writing.