Hi :) so I’ve been really inspired lately to do wordvomits in the same vein as Visa does. The idea is to sit down every day (unless extraordinary circumstances forbid it) to just write 1k words about whatever, without much thinking about what comes out. I think this aligns really well with my general blogging style so I thought I would give it a try, starting from today.

It’s more or less like stream of consciousness but with the added constraint that whatever comes out should be published online, which pushes one to at least make the whole thing a bit more sensible. Editing will also be minimal: no rewriting, no rewording. I will just limit myself to basic grammar fixes, punctuation, and adding the odd link here and there.

I’m not sure if I’ll aim for 1k words. In my journal I usually write ~ 700 words, so that’s probably a more natural target for me.

From what I understand Visa also times (or timed? Not sure if he’s still consistently doing these wordvomits) himself with the goal of finishing his “vomit” for the day in 15 minutes. I won’t be as strict as that, but I’ll aim to at least finish it in one sitting. I also like what he does of numbering the vomits and adding a small title / summary to each. Makes it nicer to navigate and look back on to.

The strategy when writing will be to first do some free word association to give my mind a chance to suggest interesting themes or topics for that day. I’m not going to set any rules for whether I should write about a single thing per vomit or not. Probably not.

It’s going to be a bit messy I guess. Visa’s own wordvomit page is quite hard to navigate but, I think, it’s beautiful in its own right. It’s actually an artistic creation that’s hard to come by online. Most people don’t just write such an amount of stuff or so directly from what they’re thinking. The whole thing is inspiring. Well of course I find it so, or I wouldn’t really be doing this at all.

The whole goal is two fold. First and foremost to be less perfectionist and allow myself to play, and experiment more. On the other hand, and it really goes as a side of the first, the goal is to strengthen the connection between my conscious mind and my more creative deeper self.

In the past I’ve had this experience where I really don’t feel like I’m the one writing. It feels as if I’m riding a wave made of words, and all I can do is keep my balance. That’s, I guess, the experience I’m chasing here.

I actually stopped having this when I started to get in my own way, when I started expecting a certain standard and quality for my posts. Of course, given my personality and usual thought patterns, this eventually evolved into not posting anything because nothing meets the bar.

The end goal here, I think, is to create a body of work that represents different ideas, and then be able to connect them to find themes or ideas that I repeat and I need to work through or, perhaps more importantly, things that are important to capture more formally. I know I’m still far away, but my dream is to have something like Visa’s index page, where he links to important posts and shows related ones.

Now, this is a bit disjointed from the original goal I had of writing better. I guess my writing will improve by proxy, and that’s good enough. For some reason I feel like, right now, the main thing I want to do is “post more”, so this is a strategy that will help me get there more than aiming to write well (again, setting standards and expectations is not good for productive output). Perhaps that means there’s something I want to say or express even though I still don’t know what it is. Still, probably not worth dissecting it now. It will come out of its own accord.

So yeah. I doubt you’re still reading this, but as you can notice I’m struggling to find what to write about next. That’s good I guess? There’s also other stuff happening around me as I write this, which has distracted me from my goal of writing this in one sitting! We’re preparing to go to the beach and everyone is asking me if I’m ready.

Oh just realized I already hit the 700 words mark! That is it then.