Welcome Back Blogger, It's time for a change.
This post is going to be very stream of consciousness. I am out of practice. Hopefully, I can make the future of this space something more focused. This is just what it needs to be at the moment, and will evolve as many times as necessary.
I have been thinking about making a regular habit of writing for some time now. I decided to put up a commitment post somewhere other than social media (FB/IG). First I signed up for NaNoWriMo, which is, as I understand it now, a support system for writers to crack out the first draft of a Novel during the month of November. I didn't understand this fully when I sought it out, I was just looking for some inspiration to give an immediate jump-start my writing. It is already November 18 and I am well behind schedule for the November nano novel goal. Realistically cranking out a novel by November 30 when I haven't been writing regularly for several years is not going to happen. What is going to happen? I will use the resources and support on the site to inspire me.
I wanted to find something longer term that could be bent to my needs. When I typed blogger into the search engine, I did know blogger was a blogging website, but I forgot that I already had an account. This is one of several false starts I made at a photography blog, but abandoned it when I decided to use Zenfolio for my photo hosting. I no longer have Zenfolio, so here I am again. I don't know that this will be the permanent place for my writing, but it is already here. so it is the place I will start.
I commit to myself, during this my 50th year (almost the end of my 50th year) that I will begin a regular writing practice. I am going to start with the goal of writing daily. If that starts being tedious or interfering with things like work or sleep - I'll renegotiate my plan so that there is still structure, but it works for me (say I'll write every Monday, since that's my day off, and I'll write enough additional times to add up to X number of minutes/ hours/ pages.) For today, I am going to start with a daily goal. After a month (maybe on my 51st birthday, which is on a Monday in about 3 weeks) I will re-evaluate what is working and decide on a reasonable goal.
This flexibility with goal setting is something that I haven't already allowed myself. I have learned through participating in various challenges over the years (30-day plank challenge, 365-day photography project, run 5K or walk10,000 steps/day for the rest of your life) that too much rigidity takes the fun out of the challenge and after a while can lead me to either throwing in the towel, or just phoning it in to finish a task. That is not really the point of these types of challenges. The point is to establish a new habit, or improve upon a skill, or learn about your fashion consumption. The rigidness of absolutely doing something every day is helpful for a time, but once the lesson is learned, the habit is established, it is time to figure out how to make it sustainable for the duration of life.
For now, for this challenge, I will write (in a notebook) for at least 10 minutes every day until my birthday, at which time I will re-assess how to make a SMARTs goal related to my writing. What is a SMARTs goal? It is borrowed from coaching and health behavior change counseling, but very much applies to any change we want to make in life. SMARTs stands for
Measurable
Achievable
Relevant
Time-Bound
Sustainable
I added the last S, because it is important for me.
I think that's good for now, my commitment post. One of the things I will need to work on in my writing over the next year is pith. I plan to focus on both creative writing and informative writing. The informative pieces need to be concise, which is not my usual style of communication. I am both a listener and a talker, but when I talk, I am seldom brief.
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