Right Now, This Is A Blog Post

As a child, I loved journals. I bought many. Each had so many pages with so much potential. I still have them to this day. But aside from my name, they remain untouched. That’s because while I loved the idea of creating a record of my thoughts and ideas, the challenge of filling it with content worthy of the journal was too much for me.

What went wrong? I misunderstood the purpose. The journals were tools for me to record my thoughts and ideas that may or may not one day be realized into something larger. They were not meant to be great themselves.

The idea of creating something perfect was getting in my way of creating anything at all. My vision was preventing all productivity.

Now, when creating anything, I will start anywhere. Write a few words, draw a few lines, make a few cuts, swing an axe. Just make it bold and make it permanent.

No pencils here. No undo button. These allow for revisions and second guessing.

Once the first stroke has been done, I can assess my progress. Do I like it? Should I include or exclude it? This is how some of my best work is done.

Sometimes many revisions are necessary to arrive at the end result, but if the previous revisions don’t survive (e.g. were erased/undone), there is no way to study and learn from them and understand why the end result is as good as it is.

Right now, this is a blog post. Yesterday it was an idea (actually, it was a different idea). Tomorrow it could be a book, or a billboard, or a tattoo.