midpoint
yesterday’s draft was my 50th substack post, marking the midpoint of my participation in the 100-weekday creator challenge hosted by
1:
in honor of that milestone i thought i’d reflect on how it’s going so far! in no particular order:
my experience (and level of enjoyment) keeps changing
i was totally enthralled during the first 1-2 weeks. i had never seriously tried writing this consistently - let alone publishing that writing - and i was delighted by how much fun it was. new ideas seemed to miraculously materialize out of left field each day!
but somewhere around week 3 my feet started to drag. i didn’t feel as inspired anymore; the writing became a chore which hung over my head like a re-appearing raincloud. during that week i decided to let myself procrastinate a bit each day - instead of starting in the morning as i had in previous weeks, i allowed my start time to shift later and later in the day according to when inspiration struck. throughout the challenge thus far i have kept a rule not to plan writing topics in advance but rather to choose whatever grabs my attention the most on that day; if that happens to occur only at around 5:30 PM then so be it! (i did, however, try to always start by 9 PM at the latest).
last week felt inspiring again; this week has been a bit draggy. i am learning to roll with it and see the instability as a way to build resilience!
it’s hard to get used to the fact that people don’t always connect to my writing
i have a feeling this will be an ongoing struggle for me, the experience of posting occasional duds which don’t garner any reaction (likes, comments etc.). while i don’t consider myself an online “engagement farmer” by any stretch, it’s still sometimes hard to stomach the idea that my audience dislikes or doesn’t find what I write interesting. it feels personal somehow, as much as i don’t like to admit it. ideally i could convince myself that my writing is purely for myself, but the fact is i already do that in my pen-and-paper journal as well as in LogSeq (notetaking tool). of course i hope the things i post publicly will resonate with people; i want to feel a sense of belonging and connection to others! but over time, this process seems to get easier - not that i care less per se, but that i’m able to move on from the initial disappointment more easily.
i never used to think that proficiency was achievable - or important - for me
before this challenge started, the idea of publishing was far more daunting than the idea of writing - if the only goal is to reach a certain daily word count, then you can always kick the task of editing/proofreading down the road for later, which may or may not result in tens if not hundreds of perpetually unpublished drafts sitting around in your local “misc.” folder. now i can see how publishing makes a world of difference for a certain kind of writing - it gives a sense of completion and accomplishment which allows you to move on. no constant need to tweak and improve what’s already been posted! (although i will admit, i have occasionally gone back and made tweaks to old posts. but not as often as i’d expect!) as an added bonus, the fact that we only need to write a minimum of 100 words, and only on weekdays, makes this challenge very feasible for me. lesson learned: when aiming for sustainability, set a low bar for success!
managing distractions is an ongoing battle
my instinct is to open another browser tab and jump to twitter, or the new york times, or gmail or some other reliable source of distraction as soon as words stop flowing freely to my fingertips. i believe there is a psychological underpinning to this - some part of me which hopes to undermine my progress because it’s afraid to write something awful. when i’m feeling well-centered it’s not too big of a problem, but the impulse is often lurking somewhere in the background.i’m still a bit lost!
although this challenge has been on the whole very rewarding and a ton of fun, i am having trouble seeing what comes next. what do i ultimately want to do with writing - make some income from it? keep it purely as a hobby? on the one hand, i think i do have a voice, but my topics are pretty scattered, and there isn’t any particular genre or niche that i feel myself gravitating towards. who knows though - maybe the second half of this challenge will reveal some insights!
if you are reading this Jibran: I can’t thank you enough for organizing this lovely initiative!
So glad you’re getting a bunch of insights. Not many people can keep up the work to get both reward of insights _and_ the body of work.
And I can underwrite all the points you made and have gone through the ups and downs (and still go through some of them, and probably always will) as well.
Ohhh you've had some pretty good little epiphanies!