Reflecting Twenty Articles In Twenty Days
This will be my twentieth article I’ve written in the last twenty days. At the start of the month I decided to challenge myself to write thirty one articles in thirty one days throughout December. I feel like I have written some great articles which I’m excited to watch gain traction over the next few months. I’ve written some other articles which allowed to express my general thoughts on how I perceive the world’s view on mental health. I’ve also probably written a few articles that just aren’t that great. I think this one probably falls into that category.
Breaking The Routines
I started today waking up later than expected. By the time I ate and got out of the shower it was already approaching 8am which left me no time to write an article before work. I had an old coworker text me in the middle of the day to grab drinks after work which brings me to 9pm which is around the time I normally go to bed. At this point I’m stressing out and scrambling to think of something to write just so I can check a box that says I did what I set out to do. Does that actually count though? In some ways I suppose it does, after-all my main goal was to make writing feel effortless and if I’m writing something that’s basically about nothing isn’t that fulfilling the goal?
Why Even Do A Challenge?
While I still have eleven articles left to write after this one I still think this challenge has been valuable overall. While I’m definitely not proud of this article I think the fact that it’s making me squirm because I haven’t written has helped me to reset my writing muscle. Back in mid-2017 I was writing about all sorts of things and was having a good time. Granted I wasn’t writing every day, but once a week wasn’t out of the ordinary. Fast-forward to 2018 and I have only written several articles, most of which I had to struggle through to complete. Really up until December it has felt like a chore to write; while this article is a chore most of the others were actually fun to write.
So I guess the point of this challenge (and any challenge for that matter) is to help reset your baseline expectations. This past year I also gave up social media for a month and found it gave me a breath of fresh air, while I eventually returned to social media I was much more mindful about it. I feel like I’ll have a similar outcome from this, where I wont write every day but ideally I won’t go months at a time without writing either.
The Burn Out Is Real
I don’t think I’ve ran out of opinions to write about. I am definitely running out of non-political opinions to write about though. There are a lot of topics I want to write about concerning Android and software engineering in general, but they would take more than one day to author. I could dig into various things going on at work but they largely are not relevant to a larger audience, and so at this point I’m left with figuring out how to write about bite-sized subjects. Tomorrow is thankfully my last day of work for the remainder of this challenge so I can dedicate more time to writing the articles. I also think that writing series in general might be the way to go, I’d love to write about Clean Code and other longer-form topics where it’s broken up to a weekly chunk.
Overall though, I think it’s safe to say I am burnt out on writing. At this point I feel some dread when it comes to having to write. I’m not really sure what I will write about next, and for the most part I’m just trying to fulfill the requirements of a challenge. On a positive note, I am committed to completing this challenge, and I do believe future articles will have a bit more substance than this one.
