This isn't the first blog I've tried to cultivate, and I'm having the same problem that has fucked me every other time... I have writing ideas at every possible moment in the day, but when I sit down with my account open, a new post ready to be completed, my mind blanks.
'But, Tamsin, why don't you just write it down and the time and then look at that list when you're ready to blog?' Excellent question with a stupidly lame answer. When I look at that list later, every idea seems dumb, childish, irrelevant, pointless, already been done to death, [insert your preferred excuse here], etc etc. My mental block is about putting myself out there and sharing. That is terrifying to me. Perhaps the most terrifying thing in life to me. And writing it down right now, I can feel future Tamsin rolling her eyes with immense regret when she rereads this. Which is why one of my blog rules is to not edit. Actually, I should edit that to say never reread any posts... at first.
I've found some magic in a morning pages habit that's been going strong for nearly four months now. 'What's the magic,' you ask? Excellent question. It's been non-judgement and consistency. The habit is more important than the content. One of the rules is that you aren't allowed to share your pages with anyone, including yourself. You don't go back and reread. This is to allow you to be as petty, stupid, needy, flighty, obnoxious, [insert negative adjective you think about yourself here] as you want. It's meant to shake out all those cluttering thoughts that are getting in the way of your creativity. If you're distracted by your to-do list, write it down in the pages. Your significant other's breathing is now the most unbearable noise you've ever heard and is the ONLY thing you can hear when they are in the room - so write it down. Get it out of your system.
Not only is it a place where I can say all the negative, shitty things I think about myself and others, I have to write three full pages of it. Every. Day. I have to use my writing muscle everyday. And it doesn't matter what it produces. The act is enough. The pages are the prize and who cares if you just wrote 'I'm tired' over and over across 5 lines because you couldn't think of anything to write (true story). Some days I find empathy for someone I couldn't stand after writing about something annoying they did. Other days I brainstorm what a good murder mystery plot would be. And still other days my pen barfs out all the anxiety that I feel like I should be over by now.
It's in taking on this exercise that I realized the benefit is in the doing, not the overthinking and the judgement and the shitty writing. You can't escape the shitty writing. That's how writing works. So I decided to treat this blog more like these pages, and just get it out there. I won't reread this anytime soon. The point is to stop being afraid to make mistakes and to do something 100% of people will like. Because that is the real dumb, childish, irrelevant, pointless, already been done to death, [insert your preferred excuse here] way to never be a writer.*
*I winced typing that. I don't think of myself as a writer. But I think I'll get into that later.