I’ve been doing this daily writing thing for three months now. Each weekday morning, except Fridays, I sit down at my computer right after doing my meditation practice and I write a short reflection. Having done this since June, I now have 65 short pieces of writing that I didn’t have before, on all kinds of topics, especially creativity and resistance and habits and routines. As you can imagine, I love this feeling. As Dorothy Parker once said, “I hate writing, I love having written.”
Except that I’m finding that I actually don’t hate writing. I actually love writing, especially in the morning while things (including my own brain) are still quiet and peaceful. I like starting my work day knowing I’ve already had a win, that I’ve done something that I feel good about and that will add to my skills, happiness and awareness over the long term. I wasn’t sure whether I’d stick with this habit, but I’ve felt the benefits since the beginning and now it’s a self-perpetuating cycle.
In fact, I miss it when it’s gone, which it currently is about three days per week. Those mornings sometimes feel like I’m “playing hooky”, which is sort of fun at first. But I notice that I don’t feel as good those days, like something is missing. I try to make up for it by journaling, but it’s not as consistent of a habit and it doesn’t feel the same.
Gretchen Rubin often talks about the power of doing something every day. In this post, she quotes Andy Warhol as saying, “Either once only, or every day. If you do something once it’s exciting, and if you do it every day it’s exciting. But if you do it, say, twice or just almost every day, it’s not good any more.” And in this post, she notes that in her experience when you do something every day “it doesn’t make you nervous, it doesn’t feel intimidating, and it doesn’t feel like a special burden or extra credit.”
As I’ve mentioned numerous times, it’s long been an aspiration of mine to write a daily blog like Seth Godin or Austin Kleon or like Elise Cripe used to do. I always knew that the practice would be helpful and suspected it would be good for my mental health too. So with all that being said, I’m deciding to bump it up: let’s write every day. If I’m taking a holiday, I won’t *have to* write during those days, but otherwise: daily. I’m excited about this! Every day, or not at all.
