making progress, slowly but surely

i started this year with a commitment to myself. i called it constrained creativity:

“…everyday. fewer than 200 words. 10 minutes or less (including editing, not including research). whatever is on my mind. public. (mostly) not fact checked.”

i mostly started it to get over my writing anxiety. eventually, i realized it was helpful to have my thoughts in a sharable format. now i spend 20-30 minutes writing and lightly editing posts every day. it’s been a journey, but i’m doing it and now it feels strange to not! habit built.

a few weeks ago, my friend miriam told me she used my blog post about the safety pin backlash to have a conversation with a friend. the first thought when i heard that was “wow! this is great and also fucking terrifying.”

neither of them agreed (fully) with me, but she said having a piece of content neither of them created helped them walk through each of their issues related to the subject matter. they used it as a foundation on which to discuss about their own thoughts.

honestly (truly), one part of me is freaking out about this. i’ve heard of a few other stories like this from other friends and it’s insane. people are reading my thoughts and then sharing them with other friends. what??!?!?!?!!

part of the thinking behind writing in a public place was so that i could share it. but it also means that if other people want to share it and discuss it, they can. at the beginning of this year i couldn’t even hit publish more than once a week and now here we are.

monthly post numbers:

jan: 12
feb: 3
mar: 4
apr: 3
may: 9
june: 16
july: 21
aug: 29
sept: 36
oct: 26
nov: 29
dec: 36 (including this post)

i don’t really have any plans on stopping and listening to this interview with ezra klein on the podcast longform is really inspiring me (thanks for the tip ac valdez from show about race).

anyway, all that to say… i guess we’re doing this. here’s to 2017!

writing: 10:01
​spell-check, link-finding, & formatting: 22:56