45. Check in: Week 8

8 weeks, holy shit.

#RealTalk

How to do a check in with a project:
An honest and gentle look at the facts

“The most fundamental aggression to ourselves, the most fundamental harm we can do to ourselves, is to remain ignorant by not having the courage and the respect to look at ourselves honestly and gently.” ― Pema Chödrön

  • What were my goals (how do I define success)?
    To write everyday and publish longer stories that I’ve spent more time on.
  • Did I meet them? How do I feel about it?
    Not really. I did write everyday. I did not write consistently on long form posts. Or rather, I am, but they still aren’t done yet.
  • What are some challenges I faced in meeting them?
    The goal was too nebulous. Writing everyday I can do. But I was trying to improve my writing by working on more pieces over time. The startup I was working for pivoted, so my priority has been looking for a new job, finishing my portfolio and resume. It’s easy for the writing to take a back seat since I am, technically, still writing everyday and I have a more pressing priority, finding a job. Also right now for whatever reason I need more short term accountability.
  • How did it feel?
    I just haven’t been into it. I have a really hard time figuring out how to get everything done when I have something that is clearly more important than the rest — my portfolio. On the daily I still haven’t figured out how to juggle exercise (I’m really getting into the NYT 7min workout btw), meditation, looking for jobs, working on my portfolio and writing. It seems like its getting better and the experiment with trying to write long form only proved that this issue will persist, not matter what my end goal is.
  • What can I do differently to ensure the goal is met next time / make it easier?
    Set reasonable goals. My new goal needs to reflect the problem — how to write daily and feel like I’m getting practice. Maybe a better solution is to write for a certain amount of time everyday, and then publish at least 4 -6 posts / week. That seems reasonable. I have to keep reminding myself this is an exercise in practice and I need to let go of what the outcome looks like.
  • Am I happy with the results?
    I‘m happy that I’m continuing with my commitment to this project, even though it may look different as time goes on. I’m learning to adjust my expectations and acknowledge that not every week will be a huge win, and not every modification will make me feel good. As much as I get discouraged or judge myself I get more creative with my judgements. It used to be about judging the writing, now I’ve switched to judging my process. I’m not sure how to break through that other than just continuing and choosing to accept whatever this ends up looking like for me.
  • What have I learned from this?
    1.     Practice, practice, patience. I guess I got hung up on quality before and that was just another way to be judgmental toward my work. After the experiment I realized what I’m doing is just fine. It will help me get better, and it won’t stop me from writing longer stories over time as well.
    2. Accountability rules all.
    3. I just keep uncovering layers about my creative process.
    4. By not posting daily I was able to look at the metrics in a new way. A lot of my traffic comes from people who read multiple posts. Most people only read as far back as the previous 3 posts because that’s what shows up on my medium page. Thursdays were the highest traffic days.

To see how far I’ve come read my previous Check-ins:
Check-in: Week One
Check-in: Week Two
Check-in: Week Three
Check-in: Week Four
Check-in: Week Six

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