Ahh, post #50. I've been looking forward to this!
In many ways, when I first began this experiment, "fifty" was my initial goal. The plan was to publish a post every day (or almost every day) for fifty days straight, and then re-evaluate how things are going.
So far, I think it's been going great! When I first started, I wondered how the hell I would manage to post about fifty different topics. At the time, I could hardly come up with even one. And yet here we are, fifty posts later. Not all of them are great; a very few of them were even a drag to write, but most were actually fun and instructive.
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, considering that "complaining" is probably my favorite activity while journaling), but most posts actually ended up being me jamming on ideas, and a few more are me researching topics I find interesting and sharing them.
It's a bit of a 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 with 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 interests. It's like an insane, beautiful collage 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, when 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 and baths. Almost every day he complains that he doesn't want to take one, but once he's playing in the 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, and other things I want to do. I almost never manage to. On the other side, at night I'm usually 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 differently, 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 a post and decide what it will be about, so that means I'll have ~48 hours to let my mind mull on "the thing". 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 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 or not, which is 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, 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 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 more time and energy to fiction writing, which (at least for me) I can't seem to manage in a single writing session.
...
Well, here's to many more posts 🍵! Of course I don't want to stop at 50 now that I've gotten into the groove. So, I'm looking at a hundred next as the next big goal.
Thoughts:
- Woah, I haven't done a thoughts section in a while! 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 media, 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?