I embarked on this series of essays way back in May, fully intending to write a short essay each day of the month. Now it's almost the end of July and I still have a ways to go before hitting my (I had thought reasonable) target of 30. What happened?
As ever, life and work and Resistance got in the way. Some minor disruption of daily routine or weekly schedule would get inflated into a creative crisis — no way would I be able to write anything after that! There are so many other things to do and try, so I'd just follow my curiosity, read widely, distract myself with interesting trivia, but what of it then? Birthday celebrations, vacations from work, changes in the weather, changes in lockdown strictness and classifications, deadlines and busy-ness at work; I got pretty good at making excuses for not being able to sit myself down long enough for 300 measly words.
The freeform, anything-goes nature of the project also worked against me. There would be days when I'd sit down to a writing session but just waste too much time hemming and hawing, being indecisive about topics to write about. Shiny, interesting ideas abounded but which of those exactly did I feel qualified to write anything about?
And so two lessons (re-)learned:
Just show up everyday, and put even a little bit of work in. I should strengthen and maintain a daily writing habit (apart from journaling).
Constraints aid creativity. Writing 30 essays about absolutely anything sounded fun but in practice was unwieldy. I should set more specific goals and boundaries for future creative projects.
Well, it’s the home stretch and there’s nothing to it but to keep going. On to the end, then to the next writing project. (If you’ve been following along these past months, thanks and I hope you’ve enjoyed reading these little attempts!)