Category: Motivations

  • Warm Ups

    Oh sure, you read this and ask: what the heck? My imposter syndrome flares up like a torn ACL in the middle of a marathon whenever I hit publish on one of these posts.

    All sorts of people are filling blogs, podcasts, video channels, and social media feeds with unsolicited creative insights and rando advice, so much so that when I decide to do something (if nothing else) parallel to that effort it sometimes strikes me as a bit “influencer” —and not in a good way.

    I’ve been writing here routinely for a little more than a month now, tho, and I want to let anyone reading know that if motivations are worth anything at all, I think mine are leaning towards the innocent and genuine.

    I’m not trying to change your mind, or generate revenue, or glaze clout, or whatever the kids are saying these days. I’m using this writing as a warm up. I’m writing for the sake of writing, and writing metaspective gloops to throw up on a scheduled, deadlined blog is to creativity is as to doing stretches before that aforementioned marathon: not crucial, but a good idea.

    It may feel like I’m jabbering on without any solid bonafides about these topics, but I do think I have something worth saying, imposter syndrome be damned.  And a couple hundred words of jibber jabbering is just what the doctor ordered to my brain limbered up for more important writing.

    Plus, if it turns out to be something useful… it’s already been shared.

  • Doing Time

    Writers block is not myth but I am starting to think it is often a symptom of a larger issue.

    I don’t think that struggling to put words on the screen is an issue of having nothing to say, I think it is more often an issue of having too much to say… and not having anything driving one to say it.

    No timeline. No urgency. No pressure. 

    There you are, just a guy in front of a keyboard waiting for inspiration to strike?

    I have found more and more over the last couple years that as I sit down to write my 500 words of fiction each weekday that one thing has been driving my production of that volume of words: writing to a deadline has helped me overcome so many instances of block. 

    Maybe it was knowing that I need to get words in while my coffee was still hot. Or perhaps it was knowing that I had somewhere else to be in a couple hours. Could be it was knowing that I wanted to go to bed at a reasonable time. But all of it also knowing that I had a quota to meet before any of those things.

    All other concerns got pushed to the side to meet the deadline. I was doing time, writing words, and breaking blocks.

  • One Month Incremental

    I haven’t really been promoting or sharing this blog yet as I built up something of a back-catalogue of posts, but I thought it worth calling out that after one month of posting every weekday I have… tada! One month worth of posts!

    I am a big proponent of a common idea called incrementalism, the notion that big things don’t happen all at once, but rather by chipping away at a problem with steadfast effort and persistence.  

    Writing a little bit each day.

    Mastering one new skill at a time. 

    Practice, repetition, and patience. 

    Incrementally, bit by bit, line by line, word by word, anything can be done. Probably anything… within reason, y’know.

    The steady drip of water can wear away a stone after a long enough time. A person can wear away at a problem with the same incremental effort and patience. 

    And if nothing else, writing every day can build a pretty solid collection of blog posts after just one month.

  • Performance Threshold

    For a struggling perfectionist who struggles with the judgement of strangers, the most daunting thing I ever do is share my work.

    I get it. I really get it. No. I really do get it.

    You just gotta push publish. You just gotta climb up on that stage and share your voice. You just gotta, gotta, gotta!

    It’s February and as I publish this post I have no idea yet if the Groundhog has seen her shadow, but whatever the outcome I suspect I have a couple more months of weather too cold to be outside doing creative outdoor things like sketching or nature photo expeditions. (I mean I could and I will, it’s just uncomfortably chilly.) That is to say, I suspect I have a couple more months of indoor time to write words and play music and dabble in code before the allure of summer tempts me away from those projects.

    I need to share something before the end of February. I gotta.

    The turning of a calendar page can be a motivator to step over a threshold, to overcome a mental obstacle. Deadlines, are great motivators. 

    Perhaps this one will serve to help step over the performance threshold. It oughta.

  • Productivity Obsession

    I will admit that I have a bit of an obsession with the notion of tracking personal productivity.

    I have tried apps, journals, lists, calendars, logs, books, spreadsheets, databases and more.

    This afternoon I vibe coded an app for my Mac that (for now) emulates the key features of the popular and once-trendy bullet journal but in a task list-meets-log sort of way. Maybe I’ll even use it… for a while.

    Does any of it actually work tho?

    I’d like to sit here and write the virtues of all these tools in leading to a more productive creative life, but at the end of the day what probably works best is just simple accountability to self. All of these little gimmicks are meant to bolster that accountability, but if one doesn’t have it to start with then no amount of filling pages, sorting lists, or checking boxes is going to change what ends up on the pages that matter at the end of the day.