I just logged into my admin panels to check the numbers.
162 posts on this blog.
477 posts on CycleLove.
That’s 639 blog posts in 4 years.
Which averages out to about 3 blog posts a week.
Why do I keep writing when most of the time the process drives me crazy?
Why do I keep writing when it doesn’t pay the bills, let alone the rent?
(Yet…)
Blah blah blah blah blah
I wake up with a head full of ideas—then let the day drip by, distracted.
And when I finally do start writing, rubbish comes out.
Today I was meant to be posting an article about re-channeling fear as excitement. But guess what… I procrastinated all day yesterday, and again this morning. The rough draft is there but I can’t bring myself to polish it up. (And yes, it’s nothing to do with fear—I’m just overthinking things as usual).
What is this madness? If writing is the cure, why does it feel like an illness?
When I started blogging, I was going through a rough patch. I thought that writing was just a way to document my life as it fell apart around me… the old things I was trying to leave behind, the new things I was trying out.
Four years later, it finally struck me.
Yes I’d gone on amazing trips, found a new freedom in being freelance, and made a whole new network of friends via CycleLove. But there was something bigger than that.
Of all the things I had written about, over all those hundreds of blog posts, it was the writing itself that was most transformative.
It wasn’t just a record of where I’d been, but a manifesto for where I wanted to go, and a tool to get there faster.
That’s why I keep putting the words down, even though it feels like rolling a boulder uphill.
Do the work.
Keep doing the work.
Even if no-one gives a shit.
Especially when no-one gives a shit… because it gets even harder when someone does, and you’re wondering if what you’re doing will live up to their expectations.
The first album is easy. You don’t have any fans yet, and expectations are zero.
The second album’s a fucker. Your critics are waiting to shoot you down.
The third album’s a lament for the time just before your first album came out, when life was free and easy and no-one knew who you were.
Fuck it.
Do the work.
Do the work when you don’t feel like it.
Do the work on the rare days when you do feel like it, and smile.
There’s no pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.
But it’s not about the result.
The work is the reward.
You’re getting lucky every time you do it.
So I don’t care if my 639th article gets lucky. Because I’ve already been lucky 638 times already.
Lucky to be alive, to be breathing, to be thinking.
And I'm lucky to be talking to you now.
639th time lucky.
Posted to Uncategorised in 2016.