Ahh, post #50. I've been looking forward to this! In many ways, when I first started this, "fifty" was my initial goal. The plan was to publish a post every day (or almost every day) for 50 days straight, and then re-evaluate how things are going. So far I think it been going awesome! When I first started I wondered how the hell would I manage to fifty post topics to talk about when (at the time) I could hardly come up with even one. And yet, here we are, fifty posts after. Not all of them are great, a very few of them were even a drag to write, but most where actually fun and instructive. Even so, even after so many posts I still can't tell you if my blog is about a specific topic, or whether I like to write about certain things or in certain ways. There was definitely a lot of writing about my own problems (though surprisingly few of these post; considering that "complaining" is probably my favorite activity in my personal journal), but most posts actually ended up being about me jamming on ideas, and a few more are me researching topics I find interesting and sharing them. It's a bit hectic collection to be honest, but I love it that way. I've never really much liked those sites (usually in the Enterprise sphere, or infected by its ideals at least) where blogs only deal about a certain thing. Where they constrain themselves to, say, only tech posts, or only literature posts, or only philosophy. I've said it a lot of times, and I'll say it again, what I love most about blogging is how you get to share and see a wide range of human experiences and interestes. It's like a splattering of our shared humanity.
It hasn't all been sunshine and rainbows though. There have been many days, more than I would like to admit, where I had to force myself to sit and write those posts. The funny thing is that once I started things just flowed, which I guess is cool. It's a bit like my oldest son I imagine. Almost every day he complains that he doesn't want to take a bath, but once he's in the bath playing with water he doesn't want to get out! It's the same. Once I'm playing with words I'm just "happy" there. Still, that "forcing" is worth mentioning, as it does add extra friction to the whole process. Where does it come from? Well, I think it's twofold. On one side I struggle to find time to write in the morning. Between getting my kid ready for school, helping with chores, other things I want to do. I almost never manage to. On the other side, at night I'm sometimes tired from work AND/OR I want to spend my time doing other stuff. Or most often, I feel like I should spend my time doing other stuff, like being with my wife (it's important to have some kid free time).
Mostly because of the latter, I'll change my posting schedule a bit. I'll try to do ten posts posting every other day, which means that I now have double the time as before! I'll also probably skip weekends unless I clearly have the time to write something (like today). Weekends are usually full of activities, and I rarely get time to sit by myself until after putting the kids to bed. I'm also hoping that having two days per post will help me split the writing a bit. On free days I can start up a post, decide what it will be about, so that means I'll have ~ 48h to let my mind think about the thing and just keep adding stuff. Not sure if that will work, and it's also against the original goal of writing things in a single sitting, but I think it's a cool experiment! I've often found that when I write a post in the morning then I find myself adding stuff to it throughout the day as new connections pop into my mind.
I'm not sure if this change will be for the better of not, that's why I'm doing only ten days as a test first before committing to it. I kind of like the feeling that I'm squeezing water out of a rock with writing every day, and the rock surprises me by always having more than enough to share. Actually the more I squeeze it the more seems to come out! I wouldn't want that to stop with this change, so we'll see.
Something else I hope this change will allow me to do is to take some time to work on other writing projects, or just other writing in general! I have some emails that have been in my inbox forever. I also still want to dedicate some more time and energy to fiction writing, which (at least for me) I can't seem to manage in a single writing session.
Thoughts:
- woah, I haven't done a thoughts section in a while now! I think that's because, as mentioned above, I've been writing mostly in the evenings so usually once I'm done i'm done. Today I wrote the above in the morning, meaning I have the whole day to add "thoughts"!
- I just realized that I used to post a new "post" on social media whenever I published a new post (heh post post), but I really haven't done that for any of the posts in this series! I guess it feels like I would be spamming otherwise? I don't like to spend time on social medial, but I also don't like the feeling that I'm hiding these posts from the world. Maybe I should "federate" a couple of these posts?