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| Seriously, for me it has been a difficult lesson to accept and implement. |
I have returned. For how long and in what form, I do not know. And, for the moment, that is fine. Apparently, I was slow to potting training, to speaking my first words, and to falling in love with my future wife. Perhaps it is in my DNA. Since I am forty-seven, I decided to accept it. But, not in a fatalistic way. Instead, as proof of the above quote. Change involves sucking at things. Some people suck at things longer than others.
And, for now, that is okay.
(Currently, I hope to post once a week, and likely on Monday nights--Sundays don't seem to work well anymore. However, having written this out over the past two hours, a desire to write more is growing inside me. So, don't be surprised if begin posting more than weekly sooner rather than later.)
On May 31, 2025, I uploaded my 250th post for this blog. It took five years and one month to reach that milestone. Then I went silent. For three full months! Surprisingly, this was not my longest "sabbatical". February of last year, I went fourteen straight weeks without posting. That record still stands. And I want to keep it that way.
So, why return to blogging? First, I miss it, the writing aspect. Journaling, which I do daily, most of the time, helps, but that is stuff I do not want anyone else to see, until after my death. As for fiction, my attempts at it continues to languish, which is to say, I have not done anything for at least two years, not since the story about two dolls and a little girl. This blogging was designed as a gateway to writing fiction. Build better habits by doing something that came easier than novel-length storytelling, but more challenging than keeping a glorified diary. And add responsibility by making it public, even when it is ugly.
After all, that is how you build good habits. Pick something doable, but also pushes against your comfort zone. Practice it on a scheduled basis. Showcase your outcomes in order to track progress, receive feedback, and inspire accountability. Finally, when the habit is well established, you can parlay that success into a new, more challenging direction.
For me, journaling inspired blogging, which in turn--I hope!--jumpstarts writing fiction. Well, not quite. Like all things in life, the journey has been a bit messier. I began the first blog, oh so long ago, before journaling was a habit, when my thirteen-year teaching career ended terribly. It was to make sense of my current situation and a path forward through the uncertainty. The goal was to blog daily. Looking back, that was too lofty of a requirement. The project fell apart after a year, or perhaps eighteen months--I cannot remember. What I don't recall was the struggle to post once a week, let along each day. That journey ended in a whimper.
About five years later, I had found a new path in life: building props and stage managing performances at my daughters' dance studio. I even made some friends. Just as I was feeling my stride, Covid hit, and the lockdowns took effect. Frightened that I would lose connections I had worked hard to build, I turned to blogging. But, the desire to create, which teaching reinforced, and had faded for some time, reignited during my tenure at the studio. Writing fiction, something that I had flirted with as far back as seventh grade, and had an affair with during my ninth grade English class, but fell apart by the time I graduated high school, resurfaced.
Like an old flame, after decades of silence, had sent an unsolicited text just as the ink on your divorce papers were drying.
However, writing fiction required habits, too. During my first blogging experience, I had attempted the NaNoWriMo Challenge. While that exercise eventually petered out, the ten thousand words it inspired remained in my unconscious--as well as my computer--like embers of a forgotten camp fire in a drought-stricken forest. All it needs is good gust of wind to set it ablaze.
Then the lockdowns hit. Between desiring a connection to my newfound relationships, and needing a new outlet for my burgeoning creative side, writing became my tool. Yet, if I jumped into it without some sort of plan, I would begin, driven by enthusiasm and lofty ideas, but begin to drown as inevitable obstacles and setbacks arose. Eventually, giving up altogether. Just ask my high school teacher, or my college history professors. Even my students could point out moments when I began class projects with high hopes, commit a flurry of activity, then throw up my hands in frustration, or quietly let it all fade out. It is one reason my teaching career remains dormant.
The story of my life.
So, with this newfound desire to write, I decided on a different approach. The blogging would come first--journaling was not a thought, yet. It would be once a week. And, I would ask for help implementing it. Many thanks to my former co-worker for great feedback--I do miss my fellow teachers! Surprisingly, within a month, every Sunday turned into three times a week. That went on for months. However, the fiction had not.
An old habit, seeded in early childhood, with a growth spurt through high school, paralleling puberty, and cemented by my college experience, was getting in the way. Although I was blogging three times a week, each of those posts would begin and end hours before I hit "publish". Only the first few posts of this blog arose from multiple drafts that I worked on days in advance. It shows. Procrastination had become a disease.
Daily writing was going to be the cure.
The logic was simple. Start with small, doable steps. Implement them each day. At some point, increase intensity/duration. When it becomes a part of your muscle memory, add a new step. Then begin a new step. But always start small. Since I found it difficult to write fiction, even for just a few minutes a day, and drafting blog posts was a challenge, I settled on journaling. Between the lucid, vivid dreaming, and the need to make sense of my daily action and thoughts, I had a cornucopia of material. Also, no one would be reading it, so structure and form could be subpar, at least in the beginning--at some point, I decided writing well, even in a diary, was a habit worth pursuing. So, without giving up on blogging, or even pulling back on it, I began journaling each day.
That was five years ago. The blogging slowed down, considerably. It became inconsistent. But, the journaling continues. This past year, I have one or two months where the days I have skipped have equaled the days I have completed an entry. Overall, however, I have remained steady. Yet, none of this has translated into writing fiction.
I was missing something about procrastination. Yes, it was a habit, reinforced constantly by other bad habits. It festered for decades. To get rid of it requires picking up better habits. But, there was another variable to this equation for success that I was missing. Procrastination is also a fear: the fear of making a mistake. However, knowing that you are afraid of it is not enough. You have to embrace the act of making errors as a necessary step in progressing.
And this is where one of my favorite quotes from Adventure Time proves appropriate and inspirational: "Sucking at something is the first step towards being sorta good at something." So, after a three month hiatus, I am returning to blogging--hopefully, more than weekly--, without a specific plan, or structure in mind. For a while, these posts will be ugly, meandering, blobs of inconsistent shape and size; cover all kinds of topics; and, arrive raw and unfiltered.
Perhaps, after a few months, this project will take on a formal shape, and showcase my thoughts and writing skills more effectively. And, maybe, I will finally acquire that habit of writing daily, both for this blog, and future works of fiction.
For the moment, I have this blog post.
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