📔 Starting my Commitment to Daily Writing
Last Updated: 3 months, 3 weeks ago
And Finding a Passion and Purpose for Being
The REAL "First Post".
I recently came to the realisation that writing is a passion and purpose I have been postponing pursuing, while I have been pursuing purpose. (Yay tongue-twister!)
Writing, combined with research, is something I somewhat have explored in my freelancing job - the nature of which enables me a fair amount of diversity in the projects I pursue and the topics I explore - and these elements are perhaps the most enjoyable aspects of it.
Writing itself was my childhood dream - specifically the goal of becoming a book author, which was later replaced with journalism, although my actual career path for a while took me elsewhere.
Lately, this writing dream seems to be something I’ve gravitated towards again. My experiences (alluded to in my bio) are something I hope to share in more detail, for reasons I also intend to go into in a later post.
The thought of considering writing the career, calling it “my main”, or identifying myself as part of the class of people who refer to themselves as “writers” has also been a somehow daunting prospect.
This too has been a discouraging force, creating a flawed self-criticism cycle based on flawed logic, whereby I would iterate on comparing myself to others and giving up before I started. I will probably make a post on that too in future.
Furthermore, ADHD would make maintaining projects difficult and general perfectionism would tend to lead to analysis paralysis and often prevent projects from getting started at all.
But thanks to this new approach I've taken on, I’m finally doing something now, following a dream and a goal or at least a pattern, trying to pace myself accordingly so I don't burn out.
I'm also working on processing the trauma from my parents that is the cause of that defeatist perfectionist programming and feelings of inadequacy in the first place, so hey, that’s a start! This is also something I intend to post on in future.
(To be honest I have actually started writing all of those posts I allude to "intending" to write, and had originally linked them hoping to have them up by the time anyone actually stumbled onto this blog to read it, but they are heavy-going for me and I was not able to push them out.
They kind of become pretty brain-fog-inducing, truth be told, which to me indicates that my brain is telling me to take it slow in the processing of trauma. Trying to get those out had slowed down my general blogging to a crawl, so I think those particular topics are just a bit much for me to handle right now.)
So they shall come out one day, but I might just have to give those particular posts time, and right now just focus on the lighter, or at least easier stuff for me to blog about.
I am not sure where all of this writing is going to lead me, or whether I shall perhaps one day become a published author or make writing my full-time job, but I'm going to just devote time to writing and to do the best I can do, and taking it one day at a time.
Today I am finally starting it: my commitment (yikes, that scary word which carries so much pressure for me!) to actually start writing every day, to not overthink it, and to just DO it.
To just do it means to live in the moment, to make something imperfect and short-term, and to get those works out there in some published format (which I suppose means this blog).
To just do it means to expose my writing in its naked, vulnerable form to the potentially scathing eyes of the people out there, knowing it will never be perfect, and that's ok because: it is*.
My writings are a part of me, but also they ARE me. To let them be seen makes me feel rather like some little desert animal wandering through the exposed wilderness while vultures circle overhead.
Yes, you, imagined (insofar as I press “publish”) reader, are my vultures!
Welcome to the desert of my mind!
Where things that look dead I'll work to bring to life.
And I hope you will, in the words of Deckard Cain:
(Yeah I know, it's trash and contrived, but god damn I just love that dude!)
“Stay awhile and listen read”.
######*That is to say, it exists
_
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