вторник, 12 июля 2016 г.

on daily writing


i am very happy to have a new post ready today. if you read my post last week, you know that i have had quite a month, and getting back on track is never easy. if you did not - go read it now, before you continue reading this one. after you do - you will know that i have been writing and posting every single day for almost two months on medium. today i would like to tell you a little bit more about it. maybe there is something you have been thinking of starting for a while, but kept on postponing it. well, this post will let you know that you need to start right n o w.




first of all, let me tell you about writing in my life, in general. i have always done it, but it took me a while to find a format to write in and share it afterwards. when i was at school, i enjoyed writing essays more than anything else in the world. at home i tried to just write my thoughts down, but i knew that it was not what i wanted it to be. i looked for other ways of writing and i could not find them back then. i wrote all sorts of personal things and sometimes even shared them online, but there was no structure and no plan. if i felt like writing - i would write, if i did not - i would not. deep in my mind i knew that this was wrong. i wanted to spend my life writing, i wanted to write professionally, so i had to get really good at it. how could i do it? there was and still is only one way - by writing on a regular basis, preferably - daily. i realized it five years ago and only recently i have finally started doing it. better late than never, right?

i spent five years writing from time to time, not writing at all, writing a lot and writing a little, posting, not posting, working as a journalist, then working as everyone but a journalist, not writing for a while, realizing that i missed writing - looking for ways to write and be published, getting tired of all the difficulties you have to overcome before someone agrees to publish your work and then...i decided to do something i wanted to do right after graduating from school, but did not have enough courage to - i created a blog, this blog. it seemed like a weird decision and it also made me feel like "one of those bloggers", but i ignored those thoughts - i knew why i was doing it - for the sake of writing. nothing else mattered as much as it did. i realized that i should stop knocking on each door that i could reach and just write. maybe no one would read it, maybe very few people would, but i would write, i would have a place to share my writing. i used to think that i could write for myself and just keep it, but it does not really work this way. you have to have a certain schedule, you have to have deadlines. this is why a blog was a perfect solution. right after i started, i made a decision to write and post twice a week. i did not always manage to, but at least, i have always had a goal. 

now, a different part of this story - medium. it came into my life about a year ago, when my friend started sharing articles from there with me. i read and i really liked them. i felt something special. then i arrived to paris and opened medium`s main page. i had a look and realized that i could write there too. this was a couple of months before my blog. i created a page on medium and posted there a few times. actually, i read this post and thought "hmmm, i could write every day too. this would be so cool". guess what? i did not do it. i overthought everything and invented too much pressure in my own head, so i just could not do it. i wrote a few more posts there and gave up. somehow i decided that blogger would be more appropriate for my kind of content, than medium, so when i was struck by realization that i did not have to wait for anyone`s acceptance of my texts - i created a blog here. was it a mistake? i am not sure. from time to time i think that i should have concentrated everything on medium, because i really love it there. on the other hand, it is perfectly fine for me to have these two different platforms developing simultaneously.

six or seven months after creating this blog, i got back to reading medium a lot and once again read a post about daily writing. i re-read the post, read a few more on the same subject and decided that i wanted to do it. this time i knew that i would not give up, i would keep on doing it. i made a conscious decision in my head and wrote my first post out of many more that would come later. i have been making a lot of effort in order to keep this word. as i mentioned in the beginning of this post, i have been writing and posting daily for almost two months now. am i planning to stop? no, i want to do more and more and more. why? because it challenges me in the best possible way, and because i write no matter what. last, but not least, i enjoy it a lot!

moreover, a truly eye-opening thing for me was that the more you create, the more ideas you get. i had a lot of fears and i still do, one of them is - where will i get enough ideas? what will i write about, if i have to write every day? guess what? it is possible, it really is. yes, sometimes it is almost unbearable, but than you excuse yourself and write something very short and it is fine too. why? because you were dedicated enough to do even that. also you stop caring about "perfection" that much, you finally realize that there will always be something you lack/miss/do wrong, and it is okay. why? because you can go to sleep and start it all over again tomorrow, which makes it all easier and, kind of, lighter. make your mistakes today - get so much better tomorrow. seriously!

i have not been discussing this much with anyone apart from the closest people of mine. actually, i even thought of keeping my medium profile a secret, but then i realized that i meant so much for me, this whole process has been extremely helpful and delightful. there was no way i would not share it with you. what i want from life is do something that is very important for me in terms of personal and professional growth every day, despite being busy/tired/sad. writing does both of those things for me, which makes it even more valuable and even more special. i do not want to stop myself from progress and development, this is why i hope to keep on writing every day till the end of my days. writing and posting daily was just a way to turn this desire into a natural habit. i am grateful for those posts, that inspired and motivated me to do it, and i am excited to see what is coming up in the future.

actually an idea of doing something every day was not new to me, when i read those posts. the first time ever, when i heard about someone doing something similliar was when i found out about sofia`s "one day one sketch" project, which has just turned two years, by the way. i did a short interview with her, so if you missed it - you can read it here. another extraordinary example was and still is casey neistat. i have never been a youtube fan. actually, i am very bad at watching videos, but some time last year or in the beginning of this one i became a total casey fan. he has been daily vlogging for over a year now, and his videos never let you down. he is amazing.

finally, i think that it is extremely interesting to observe and watch creative people come to this idea of doing something every single day, comitting to it and creating while using very different tools and mediums. is not it exciting? therefore, if there is anything you really want to do, but you think that you do not have time/are really bad at it/any other reason that stops you from doing it, please put all of those "reasons" aside and just go for it. set a goal, aim for doing something every single day no matter what. even if you have to wake up at five am or do it last minute before midnight, just do it. it won`t be easy, but like every other worthy thing, it will feel great. 

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