Amending Commitment

Ryan Albritton
Jul 24, 2017 · 2 min read

In the past week I have taken on a deeper level of commitment to self-care and compassion. I have practiced, daily, allowing thoughts to come and go, thoughts that would generally get stuck in my head. I have allowed myself to be who I am and accept that, which is something I generally struggle with. I finally started a guided meditation practice each day, and that seems to be helping. Though I feel that this past week was productive in that sense, it was utterly unproductive in the case of this writing commitment. I don’t think I wrote much else besides the few words I posted here. I think because of this new practice, I was able to accept that and largely take the week off and spend time cooking and gardening instead. Often, I have beaten myself up about not writing enough or generally doing enough of the stuff that is “valued” by our society. Last week was a notable and welcome exception.

Today I find myself mired in that same struggle again. I don’t really want to be writing this right now and I don’t think I’m saying anything ground breaking here but I have this commitment, you see. This is where the amendment comes in. It’s been nearly two months of this daily publishing exercise and while I value the experience and feel grateful for where it has gotten me, I am at a point where I’m not sure it’s going to be that helpful going forward. In fact, at this moment, I feel like the daily commitment to publish something is actually hindering my ability to work on longer-term writings. I realize that one solution to this may be simply to write more but that’s not quite where I am right now. Given that, I may take a step back from daily publishing in order to focus on more thoughtful and longer writing projects and allow weekly publishing to suffice for the time-being.

So, in case there’s no post here tomorrow, now you’ll know why. Who knows though, I may wakeup inspired to share something brilliant! Or maybe not, I just want to give myself the option going forward, in the spirit of self-compassion.

Ryan Albritton

Written by

Writing my way out one day at a time. Stories about food, rants about culture, Anti-Racism, some poetry too.

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