On Doing Something Repeatedly

We Reach a Minor Milestone!

This is my 25th post on this platform, in as many days. That may not seem like a lot to you—well, unless you’re wondering why you signed up for this to begin with, then it may feel like too much!—but it’s significant to me.

I am not particularly good with goal-oriented routines. As much as I would like to be the kind of person who lives a disciplined and structured life, I kind of hate it. I’ve kept up good routines in the past, but most fail quickly, and just about all fail eventually.

What can I say? I like to be free.

Freedom is great, but it also leaves me with a fair amount of FOMO. I want to do this thing, or start that project, or get this thing done. And when I’m not disciplined, I don’t. And I feel like I’m never where I want to be. This, of course, is where discipline comes in. To get something done, you have to start it, and then you have to keep doing it, until its done.

So why is it so dang hard? I don’t know; I’ll leave it up to the psychologists and rule-of-life folks to figure that out.

What I do know is that I’ve written every day for 25 days. This is a big deal for me. I enjoy writing. I love words. I love ideas. I love to communicate an idea in an elegant and efficient manner. It’s deeply satisfying. But boy is it difficult.

I once heard that it takes 500 sermons for a preacher to hit his stride. I one hundred percent believe it. I’m just over that hump, and while I’m not a great preacher, I’m now a comfortable one. I suspect a similar reality is at play with writing.

Writing is hard, because structuring ideas in meaningful and useful ways is hard. I often struggle with paralysis at the beginning of any project. How do I start? Where am I going? How will I say this clearly?

This is part of the reason this project has been so helpful to me. I have to write something for each day. Which means I have to come up with something to write about each day. And I have to figure out how to say it, each day.

Has this little project elevated my anxiety? It has, dear reader, in fact raised my anxiety. I stare down a tiny deadline each day, and can’t fully rest until it’s completed. But it’s a productive anxiety, not a paralyzing one. The kind of anxiety that moves you. And the more I write, the easier it is to get going.

I have a long way to go, but I’m grateful to have you along for the ride, my friends.