It’s almost been an entire year since I decided to start writing this blog, and while I haven’t written every day, I did so for 97.5% of them. Not shabby.
When I look back at what I think went right, I think what stood out was starting slow. For the first month, all my blog posts I wrote on my Notes app. I didn’t want to tell people that I was embarking on this grand project, only to discard it a few months in. Instead, I set myself small milestones, and once I built up the momentum, it became hard to stop.
Writing everyday isn’t difficult. The world is so interesting, and there have been some (very average) posts I have written in under a minute as I was falling asleep. But just because it isn’t difficult doesn’t mean it’s hard; losing weight requires one to just stop stuffing their damper hole with treat, but again easier said than done.
What have I got out of this? The biggest one has been a stronger connection with friends and family abroad. Quite a few times I have met up with a subscriber and they’ll mention something I have written months earlier. It’s nice, and it means we can spend less time “catching up” and more time deepening our relationship.
In terms of becoming a better writer, I’m not sure if there has been any significant change. I think I’m better at writing “ok” text faster, but I certainly haven’t become Dostoevsky in the past year. Part of this is that I rarely write at my best – it’s often the last thing I do before bed – so perhaps I can change that next year.
Finally, it’s been a great opportunity to create a body of work. I never go back to read past pieces, but next week I might get ChatGPT to read the corpus and share their thoughts. Who knows what they’ll uncover!