I was writing a blog post a day for the entirety of 2022. That stopped because I didn’t want to punish myself anymore :P
Nice feedback
I received some nice feedback on a newsletter I wrote for my company today. It felt nice, of course. Writing, in any form, is something that I believe I am meant to do. So to be complemented for that is huge for me.
That said, I have this conflicting desire to downplay my abilities, to respond to positive feedback as if it’s no big deal, even as I am receiving that praise. It’s known as imposter syndrome, but I don’t relate to that phrase. I see it more as uncontrolled modesty.
The hump before the habit
Habits take time to form. That’s a fact.
There are books that will back me up on that statement. I will link a couple that I like below.
Anyway. Because habits require repeating an activity over a long stretch of time, there will be days when one’s enthusiasm for said activity drops from where it started. In the case of writing, my ability to write sentences (that I would be happy with) start to crap out.
And I’m plugging along
I like writing every day. You wouldn’t know it if you had met me personally, though. I often complained about how painful it is to write, how I have to put in so much effort to get my sentences and paragraphs to a level of coherence, only to fail at it.
So even though I like to write every day, I tend to psyche myself out of actually writing.
These posts can’t all be winners
There is no way in hell I can write a decent article every day. That’s fine.
To train or not to train
Driving in Southern California sucks. Like, it really sucks.
Take my commute as an example: a 23-mile drive that can vary from 30 minutes to 150 minutes depending on the day. On average, it would take me about an hour and twenty minutes to get home.
That’s a lot of stop and go traffic to deal with. And that really sucks.
Back at it
I went on one of my old hikes. It’s an uphill climb on one of the mountains behind Corona.
I think the last time I went on this hike was last November. The days were getting shorter and I didn’t really feel up to doing night hikes. So, I hadn't done much physical activity since then. Attempting this hike was painful.
Time to start
I am writing this while nursing a headache. I bring this up because I think it’s a good reminder that I am going to need to power through annoying moments like now if I am going to succeed at what I am about to do.
And what is it that I am about to do, dear reader? I am going to write a blog post a day.
Well, it was a good try. This is the end, though.