It’s been almost 2 weeks since I began my exper­i­ment in pub­lish­ing daily. Since I’m almost half way through my goal of mak­ing in to Jan­u­ary 31st (which also hap­pens to be my BIRTHDAY & the day I plan on launch­ing an excit­ing new ser­vice), I thought that today would be a good day to talk about my experiences.

It’s actu­ally been a lit­tle more easy than I thought. I thought I’d feel anx­ious and unin­spired most days, but really the hard­est day was Jan­u­ary 1st– I came really close to not even begin­ning. I kept think­ing, Oh It’s not really that impor­tant, I’ll just start next month, I’m not pre­pared.’ But those were all resis­tance games and I wouldn’t have been any­more ready next month, it would have been the same game but eas­ier to put off com­pounded with more guilt.

I thought inspi­ra­tion would be a huge issue– which it is, but it’s eas­ier to stay inspired than I thought. I’ve been read­ing sev­eral books, which give me ideas daily, and all the lovely new blogs and peo­ple I’ve encoun­tered are end­less sources of inspi­ra­tion. I’ve found that inspi­ra­tion isn’t really some­thing that STRIKES you, it’s some­thing you have to actively work towards. By push­ing pub­lish, I’m build­ing up an archive of inspi­ra­tion. I have proof of what I’m doing, it’s a build up of momen­tum. I can look back and gain ideas from past insights.

It is a rev­o­lu­tion in my own life (or at least it seems like the begin­nings of one). Since I have to actively seek inspi­ra­tion– I can’t just spend all day smok­ing weed in bed watch­ing tv. I’m forced to read things, to go out and do things, to work, or I won’t have any­thing to share. I’m forced to think more.

Another one of my con­cerns was the fact I spend a lot of time out­side of my house. It’s easy to work alone in your room, it’s harder to work out­side with your boyfriend and most of his friends over. And I’m a not-so-secret huge sports fan, and my foot­ball team made the play­offs for the first time in 18 years, so not being caught up in that (when all of your friends, par­ents, ENTIRE CITY is hyped) is vir­tu­ally impos­si­ble, and it is a dis­trac­tion. I’ve man­aged to push through and work even when I’m here (which I cur­rently am). I feel that this is TRANSFORMATIVE since I’ve never been able to work here before. This means, the resent­ful, neglected side of me that gets offended over too much Mad­den & Fifa, doesn’t come out that often because I’m focus­ing on my own shit.

The thing that causes me the most anx­i­ety is if I don’t have some­thing ready to post the night before. ‘Great, now I have to think of some­thing and write and edit tomor­row a midst blah blah blah blah.’ I am con­cerned that I’ll give up more eas­ily if I don’t have some­thing I can post (at least an idea!) the night before. I am craft­ing this the day of, but I had an idea of what i was going to say last night. I also sort of cheat on Thurs­days, it’s not my writ­ing, just the linkstreams of inter­nety good­ness. This feels like my bingo free spot and gives me an extra day before the week­end– and the week­end, like I said, can be pretty dis­tract­ing. I feel like if used cor­rectly, I could get all 3 week­end posts knocked out on my Thurs­day free­bie, which releases a lot of anx­i­ety (and makes sure I keep going!)

I guess what I feel the most is proud. I have stuck to things before (albeit rarely), but this time feels the most dif­fer­ent. First of all, I haven’t hit a point where I’ve just wanted to give up yet, it hasn’t even crossed my mind, in fact, I’d like to keep going after the 31st if pos­si­ble, I’d like to see how long I could go in gen­eral. I feel waves of pride when I check off on my cal­en­dar, Yes I did hit pub­lish today!

It’s also get­ting eas­ier to share the pieces and I am learn­ing what types of things land with what types of peo­ple. It feels like a lit­tle social exper­i­ment. A lot of my lovely read­ers have liked my Prin­ci­ples of Art, a lot have enjoyed the things I say about writ­ing. Some posts get more likes and oth­ers get retweeted more. It’s really inter­est­ing but I hope it doesn’t start to affect the way I write. I’d like to just keep writ­ing and keep notic­ing with­out judg­ing or chang­ing. I have learned that the more vul­ner­a­ble the post it, the more it does seem to land for peo­ple. And well, if I do change any­thing about the work, being more vul­ner­a­ble is pretty ok with me.

So that’s it. Two whole works of actu­ally pub­lish­ing. I would like to give myself a pretty big, whacky, overzeal­ous high five right now. I would also like to sug­gest that you exper­i­ment with pub­lish­ing daily. Because I see it not just chang­ing my writ­ing, but my men­tal­ity, my relationships…MY LIFE. Why haven’t I been doing this…Always?

Related Posts:

• Best of writ­ing advice
• Prin­ci­ples of Art: Steal from your­self (aka, every­thing is an artists tool)
• 17 ways I make magic hap­pen: writ­ing edition
• Resis­tance Games
• On quit­ting smoking