150 Days of Steady Writing Taught Me More Than I Had Bargained For
No complaints there, I’ll take it as extra wisdom free of charge……
150 days.
That’s how many days I’ve been writing daily. Without a fail.
At first, it was almost like a challenge. A craving to prove myself to….well, myself.
Then slowly it became a habit, my private 101 therapy session.
At 7 am, breakfast eaten, dressed for work I fire up my laptop and start to type.
My acquaintances don’t understand. “No way I’d get up that early” — they say.
I just shrug now, there’s nothing I can say to that. Writing has given me so much and regular publishing is just one side of it.
It’s all about decisions
I used to dismiss the advice “write daily”. It was unfathomable to me, not something I could’ve squeezed into my already crammed schedule.
The joys of managing parenthood single-handedly.
I was glad that I kept up with the laundry and paid the bills. Self-actualization had to wait.
But something happened in September 2023. Nothing tragic I mean, more like a switch that had accidentally flicked. Or maybe it wasn’t an accident. Maybe it was a long time coming.
What would happen if I tried? Just to write half an hour daily.
Not publishing every day, simply writing.
It can’t be hard. And it isn’t. What’s hard is getting up at 5.00 am when I’d rather enjoy the warmth of my blanket a little longer.
But I’ve adapted and my brain has done the same. A decision has been made and no slacking is considered when setting the alarm for the morning.
Barriers can be broken down
Exposing yourself online is scary.
Or stepping out of your comfort zone in any area of your life for that matter.
I used to lay in bed at night fabricating possible outcomes that never happened. That’s not to say they never will, but — with time- you’re better equipped to take future blows. Should they ever come.
You get used to being “seen”. Commented on is no longer alien and you gradually become -or so it feels- part of a community.
We humans need that, it’s part of a healthy existence. Even if it’s virtual.
We want to connect with like-minded people, because:
- we can discuss the same interests
- exchange ideas
- and make connections
All of the above give us a boost of happy, chemical mixture that only the human body can produce.
But to experience the good-feel dopamine surge we have to take that first step. Expose ourselves, that is.
Only when we do that we realize that:
The biggest hurdle in life is often overcoming the lies we tell ourselves.
Finding answers becomes easier
When I learnt counselling a few years back I’d been given weekly assignments. These related to spotting the pain points in my character, preconceptions, and behavioural patterns I’d learnt from my parents and society.
My task was to write thousands upon thousands of words examining my own cognitive tendencies and their effect on my life and relationships with others.
I hated it.
It felt unnatural. And amateurish. Like I was pretending to be my own psychologist while trying to find the answers to complex questions. Not a clever idea.
But I learnt that writing is different when you use it as a creative outlet.
It declutters your mind. It helps you rid of the negative and often allows you to reach a flow state.
It’s like Swedish Death Cleaning only without the physical detritus.
And while sometimes it seems that we can’t see the tree for the forest, the answers might be within reach all along.
A daily reminder to take small steps towards a goal
When it comes to writing I often feel like hitting the goal post. Shots off target, so close but so far away. And ask myself the question “Is this even worth it”?
Then I look back at the articles I’d written, and the word count so far and I realize that what I thought was running on the spot is in reality steady progress.
24 articles, 24000+ words, the third of a book. The result of five months of perpetual writing for half an hour a day. That’s not a back-breaking effort, yet it’s a significant headway.
Developing micro habits to achieve goals isn’t a new concept. But we tend to dismiss it until we discover how effective they are.
Equally, we are quick to judge ourselves when we don’t see immediate and tangible results. Forgetting about the actions we took, the seeds we sowed along the way that have now started to grow roots underneath the surface.
On a final note
I eventually gave up on becoming a counsellor — my wallet being too thin for the cost of the training- and decided to pursue other things. One of them is writing.
An arduous vocation to choose.
And while there’s no guarantee for a successful outcome, writing daily has its perks on a personal level, too.
You can’t gauge this in monetary means, what you can do is find solutions to the problems you’d struggled to figure out before.
