And so it begins, one hour and twenty minutes before midnight ushers in the second day of 2023. Day 1, off to a fantastic start.
I’ve decided to challenge myself to something that I almost don’t want to do. Writing every single day this year sounds exhausting. It sounds like a mission that I will give up on before I’ve even begun. What will I even write about? What kind of content am I writing? How much? Will it be published? Will it remain locked up in a vault, slated for editing that may never happen?
All these reasons and more have weighed on me all day, leading me to wait until 10:40pm before embarking reluctantly on this quest that I’ve set for myself.
Yes, you see, this is exactly why I must do it.
Writing. Every single day. For an entire year. The thought alone makes me want to go to sleep and pretend the world has ceased to exist.
It certainly is odd, this fear of writing. It is, beyond the shadow of a doubt, the thing I do best. Uncompromisingly, across the board. I expend so much energy searching the world for my calling, my place to belong, my special skill to hone and offer the world, while knowing fully well that the words falling out of my fingertips already contain everything I’m seeking in life. Everywhere I look, the answer is the same- write! Write! Rave reviews and cryptic messages, fans I didn’t know I had approaching me to tell me how much they enjoy reading the word vomit I post on social media. The call is so loud that it’s deafening- write!!!
And yet, I don’t want to do it. Writing is something that happens, not something I plan. The pursuit of perfection is too much for me to handle; sitting down and preparing myself to fill a page with words will often result in hours spent staring at a cursor that blinks mockingly, burdening me with the weight of expectation. I don’t write because I have to, I write because it comes out, fully formed, and makes its way to social media without even so much as a cursory glance.
So to consign myself to a fate of planned writing, every single day? Torture. Not to mention the need to better budget my time and energy every day so that I may have the ability to fulfill my goals.
I want to bail out, immediately, before I’ve even begun. Which is exactly why I cannot do so.
So, here we go. 365 days of writing. An entire year of committing myself to something requiring diligence and discipline, in the interest of building and bettering myself.
Ugh.
Let’s begin.
