Write More I Said, Oops
It's important to be accountable to me, too.
I swore it wasn’t a resolution. It was a goal. I wanted to put more of The Teardown out there than I had before. In my post from January 4th of this year, I said:
#2: Write More
My desire is to write something every morning. Over the last few weeks, I’ve consumed my morning time with work-related items and holiday-season logistics. During that time, I’ve written parts of various drafts for this blog/newsletter but haven’t published anything.
So, translating that desire into a two-part goal:
Write every morning - even if for fifteen minutes.
Publish The Teardown every week- a full post, not The Writers Room.
But then, a few things blocked me much like the Ever Given impeded the Suez Canal. Whoops.
First, there was periodic writers block. I’ve written plenty of draft material for this newsletter since my above proclamation, but haven’t tied together loose ends, conclusions, and story flow in many of those drafts. Unlocking past drafts for release is hard. Sometimes I start anew. Other times, I scrap the topic altogether. My drafts folder is still a significant graveyard:
I was also bombarded with professional work. That was all work of my choosing, mind you. But it was unavoidable and time sensitive. Most of us have experienced those moments in corporate-oriented careers. You’ve got to get something done by a certain date and see a busy road ahead of you. Time is money.
For the moment, I’m fortunate to have time back on my side and in control. To motivate, I’m changing a few things:
Spending some extra time in Substack Notes. It allows for free-form shorter commentary that made Twitter famous without all of Twitter’s current issues. And, it’s a source of ideas, inspiration, etc. that I hope to translate into posts on The Teardown.
Probably sending out some of my unfinished posts. Numerous folks really like posts I hate. Others prefer I avoid writing future posts like those I like. So far, I can’t identify a specific trend. But, that means you’ll probably like some of my drafts too.
Sending emails when I know I won’t finish posts on time. You might say, please, don’t - that’s spam. The flip side is I want to hold myself accountable by forcing the admission out the door. Feel free to delete those emails or use them to hold my feet to the fire.
Finally, I want to invoke something described with eloquence by David Coggins over at The Contender:
Idiosyncrasy Still Matters. But life is more than lists. And I think, for those of you considering starting a newsletter, variation is a good thing. Don’t be afraid of your weird obsessions. I know that my dad generally likes my more eccentric stories. I think of him when I write certain things. Here’s one on my love of ice, another on cologne and one on the rarely seen Full Cleveland. People connected to these more than I expected and I was glad to see that.
Expect to see some of my weird obsessions in writing soon!