Not all habits are baby steps: writing is a leap.

People talk about taking giant leaps to reach their goals, but I have to remember to take some things one day at a time. So. Here I am, taking a baby step to tomorrow — 2016.

The above excerpt is from my last personal essay, published precisely a year ago. I haven’t written anything that I’ve given as much thought to since. And as much as I wish that it was intentional, as much as I wish to say that it’s because I took a break from writing (a believable excuse though), I know in my heart that it was because I have failed to dedicate enough time for writing.

It’s not to say that writing was not on my list of things to do because it was. It was just on my loooong list of things to do. I welcomed 2016 by setting goals for myself like being fluent in Spanish, taking graduate school entrance exams, reviving my blog, transitioning into vegetarianism, putting my music out there, running a full marathon, and making the family business profitable again. With the type of confidence anyone has when making resolutions for the new year, I was so sure that I could accomplish all of this just by taking baby steps.

In theory, if I dedicated ten minutes a day to brush up on Spanish vocabulary, answer five practice questions for the GRE, run two laps around the oval each morning, practice performing at least one song, do a couple of math drills, read three articles on my Pocket, then repeat this routine 364 more times, I’d be able to succeed at all my goals by the end of the year. It made sense: I’d always be a little bit better than the version of myself from the day before.

So I stuck to the plan. Although it wasn’t as fulfilling because it never felt like I was actually achieving anything, I knew that I was forming habits that will compound to help me succeed in the end.

Now let’s factor in writing. What I failed to account for in this method of mine was that writing (like other types of creating) requires a catalyst. In most cases, creativity requires flow. This goes against the idea of “picking up where you left off” from the day before: I can’t write a paragraph and a half for twenty minutes today and continue for another twenty tomorrow. The idea might not be there anymore the next day and (let’s be real here) it probably wasn’t that good of an idea to begin with if I was able to stop myself from proceeding.

I realized that I couldn’t subject writing to the same rules that applied to the task of listening to thirty minutes of an audiobook everyday. Writing needed more time and my list of dailies did not allot for it; it required leaps, not baby steps. If I were to write an essay of this length, I would have needed to put off at least half the tasks for the day just to get it done right — a sacrifice this multi-goal setter wasn’t willing to make in 2016.

With 2017 here and the refresh that comes with it, I can finally budget the realistic amount of time required to actually yield incremental improvements with my writing. Although I believe I would still struggle with willing myself to produce something of quality, at least I know that when I do find the drive to do so, I can write without having to steal calendar real estate from the other goals that I have set (a.k.a. carried over from the preceding year).

So here we are on Divine Dissatisfaction, a publication that will primarily cover how I take leaps and baby steps into achieving the varied goals I have set for myself, while doubling as a space for me to exercise my writing muscles.