50 Blogs By End of Year
I will write 50 blog posts by the end of 2022, starting today, September 1st. I didn’t plan this into my annual goal list, but it is precisely the challenge that structures my life to ensure I complete those goals. These posts will vary across a variety of styles. A poem here, a short narrative there, an essay further on. That’s just my style, and I have no plans to change it. Here’s why I want to do this:
1) It’s scary! What if I can’t do it? What if I fail? What if most of what I produce is trash writing? These are all good things! If I find that I can’t produce 50 posts in 121 days, that tells me something. It tells me that my process is too long or inefficient, that I don’t care about it, that I burn out under that pressure, that I don’t know how to transfer emotional wells and interests as proficiently as I think I can. If the quality is terrible, so what? Can’t I edit them? Can’t I develop a method for better writing? Can’t I take that and convert the next challenge into “I will write one good post a week”? Failure and struggle is the teacher here!
2) I’m constantly struggling to get the writing practice going. I love to write, but having an external goal that I announce to the world means I have accountability. I will look dumb if I can’t complete it, and I will feel triumphant if I do.
3) Connection. When I write, I can connect to other people, ideas, and spaces in the world. These connections and conversations inspire me to write more and stay more engaged.
4) Challenges require new habits and require me to shape my life differently. A life where I need to make space to write is a better life. It will mean going to bed early and planning my workflow so that some of the longer, challenging pieces have time to develop. The pressures from the challenge will force me to streamline the other work I’m doing, too.
5) The challenge will also force me to write down my project ideas and plans. It will feel like cheating to write a post about a marketing plan or learning sales strategy or exploring Jungian archetypes, but that’s the whole point! I am a multi-passionate person, and leaving the door open for multi-passionate writing is exactly the way to get more done. Doing the writing work will inspire me to complete the other work.
6) Writing is my best form of thinking. It creates clarity of thought, it feels creative and connective, and it forces me to put down into words my approach. It’s a record of what I thought at a specific time, and it’s a provocation to keep digging deeper.
7) It solves the “What are you going to do about it?” problem. My go-to phrase for problems right now is “What are you going to do about it?” I have said for years that I want to write more. But I consistently prioritize other things, haven’t developed a consistent rhythm for writing, and haven’t been consistent in studying the art and practice of writing. Writing 50 posts will force and encourage me to do that.
8) I’m deep into the study of learning what I want. I’m exploring the psychological reality that we mistakenly assume we know what we want, but aren’t really into the struggle of doing that thing. That we are rewarded sometimes for saying we want something and then doing nothing about it. I don’t understand the mechanism for these “Say but not Do” circumstances, but writing has fallen into this space for many years. I can use this writing practice as a probe to poke around in this mechanism. What has prevented me from writing? Where will I meet resistance? What does that tell me about myself? Unveiling these hidden mechanisms around motivation and resistance is one of the most important projects I’m working on. If I put an engineering mindset on, knowing the mechanisms of my own motivation and desires will massively increase my ability to control, guide, and determine the outcomes of my life.
9) It’s flashy. One of my goals is to do things that others find magical. “More and more, do work that only I can do.” I suspect that many people cannot find the motivation to complete a challenge like this, and further, I suspect that the ones who can are not trying to start 3 side businesses, keep a day job, help existing relationships grow and flourish, and complete a list of 70 other annual goals. I want to show off and doing this challenge will be a magician's flourish.
10) When thoughts are not written down, they are lost forever to time. Many of my friends have a journaling practice, and it’s something that I’ve been developing as well and the benefits are far greater than I expected. The benefit is so great that I think I’ve been a fool for not keeping a journal for the last 10 years. I’ve sporadically started one, but never kept up the practice. All those shifts and movements in my person could have been accelerated or improved or at the least captured. Who could I have become if I had kept track and been as diligent with paying attention to myself as I was with keeping my goal? Writing 50 blogs will also do similar work of tracking my thoughts and development in this period of time and hopefully lay the groundwork for a life-long practice.
These reasons above and many less tangible reasons help justify the goal of writing 50 blog posts by the end of the year. I know I can do it and I’m looking forward to the twists and turns of getting there!
