I Wrote Once A Week For A Year. Now What?
Figuring out my lessons and next steps
52 weeks ago, I fired up medium.com and wrote The Reasons I Don’t Write. I haven’t missed a Monday since.
I honestly couldn’t tell you what prompted it. I’m sure there was a reason but a year later, it escapes me.
Writing was new, challenging, frustrating and satisfying.
I had ups and downs in both motivation and quality. I felt the difference when I was excited about an idea and had a notebook full of thoughts vs. trying to crank out a post between social engagements and professional responsibilities.
But one year is a big milestone and worthy of a bit more reflection. This isn’t an exhaustive list but below are a few thoughts about the last year.
1. “The ultimate inspiration is the deadline.” — Nolan Bushnell
Self-imposed or not, the emotional pressure of letting yourself down has magical powers. Now that I have hit a year, I was thinking about backing off my frequency but I am a little afraid to give up the streak.
I never questioned if I was going to write a post each week. It was just a matter of figuring out what I was going to write about.
Not about brilliance…Nothing is ever finished, you just run out of time. Just get something on the page. — Gabrielle Lee
Being able to hit publish is another valuable take-away. Things can always be tweaked by fixing clunky wording, adding a joke, or re-reading on my phone to catch a typo I missed. But sometimes you have to be done.
As much as I wanted every post to be a profound, meaningful piece, occasionally, you have to write about a sparkling water blind taste test, and that is okay. Because it was always more about the process and than the product.
Monday rolls around at the same time each week and it doesn’t care if your post is ready. That forces action and I appreciate it. (I say that as I am sitting here way past my bedtime on a Sunday night trying to finish this post).
“Time and tide wait for no man.” — Proverb
2. “Don’t be embarrassed by your failures, learn from them and try again.” — Richard Branson
Writing isn’t easy.
It takes effort and time. And even if you put in plenty of both, it can still turn out crappy. This year has been an exercise in not being embarrassed by my failures. The best way to catch an error is to hit publish.
I’ve worked to get better. I enjoy the writing process and I love looking back on old posts to see my progress [or lack thereof].
I feel fortunate that technology makes it so easy to have a creative outlet without having to write code or build my own website. It has been a blast to find my voice and be able to write a few things to make my wife laugh.
3. “The only time you should look back is to see how far you’ve come.” — Kevin Hart
I’m positive I’m misrepresenting the meaning of this quote but it is pretty cool to look back and see a year’s worth of blog posts. It is a decent sized body of work. Plus, it looks much different than I expected.
When I started writing last year, I was running, 100% healthy and training for my debut 50 miler. I honestly thought these posts were going to be way more about running each week than it ended up. After battling injuries all year, there just hasn’t been much to say.
I wrote about a wide-range of weird topics over the last year which represent me pretty well. There are a lot of layers to my onion and this record of posts is an interesting snapshot.
What’s next?
For the weekly blog posts, I am not sure, yet. I have a few topics floating around my head so I may keep it going for a few more weeks until I exhaust those ideas.
Other projects: Three weeks ago, I started a hyper-local weekly newsletter (this week’s edition) which rounds up all the happenings and headlines in Livermore, CA.
What can I say? I love a stressful, self-imposed weekly deadline and writing for free.
It could be the novelty of a new project but, so far, it scratches a different itch than the blog posts.
The first edition went to just me and my bride but the mailing list has quickly grown to a loyal 48 subscribers. Quite the meteoric rise, I know. I’m excited to figure out what it is.
I’m glad I stuck with writing every week for a year.
