Yesterday, WordPress was kind enough to give notice about my streak of 60 days of publishing here.
After publishing my most vulnerable article, I knew writing would become the center of my life.
And I haven’t looked back ever since.
In my 60 days of publishing, I realized a few things:
- It sucked at first. I thought I would run out of ideas after the first few days. But that thought forced me to look deeper, observe more, and focus on the small things. What came out of it was an enormous backlog of thoughts waiting to be written.
- I couldn’t go a day without publishing. Honestly, if I didn’t publish in the morning, it felt as bad as if I didn’t brush my teeth. After a while, I’d feel awful if I didn’t write and share it. Writing became a habit I couldn’t ignore anymore.
- Marketing is essential if I want more people to read my writing. At first, I was content just writing and publishing, even if no one read them. But over time, I wanted more people to read what I wrote. If I genuinely believe in my writing, I should reinforce it until the world gets tired of it. To gain traction, I’ll need to learn more about how the internet works so that new readers can discover me.
- The streak never mattered to me. I found joy in writing, not being a writer. I’m more fascinated by a writer’s writing process than their lifestyle. I never cared for how many days in a row I was writing. If I missed a day—oh well— I’ll write the next day. I don’t write because I want to say something. I write because I have something to say. And fortunately, I have a lot of things to say.
The biggest lesson I learned was that this website is my lab, where experiments can be tested without fear of judgment or failure.
Not everything I write will be good— most of it will be discarded anyway.
But to get to the good stuff, I must get the bad stuff out of my head.
Being the biggest overthinker in the world is a strength and a weakness. A weakness because there’s a lot of bad stuff that needs sifting. A strength because more good stuff can come out of the bad stuff.
Writing and publishing every day is my method of getting all the stuff out of my head, good and bad.
And if something still sticks with me after I’ve published it, that’s part of the good stuff worth revisiting.
To have so many thoughts and ideas that I can continue experimenting is a much better way of seeing things than just a streak of writing every day.
Here’s to a streak of 60, and to many more!
Here’s my quote for the day.
There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.
Maya Angelou