Losing steam

When I did the whole 100-post challenge, I had some days that I really struggled to write posts, especially early on. After pushing through it a few times, I was surprised to discover that what had seemed like a wall of difficulty basically vanished. By week three or four, whenever I had trouble coming up with a topic, I had learned to stop worrying, because I knew I would be able to come up with at least 100 words of something, at a bare minimum.

Now that I’m trying to re-establish the posting habit for the first time since dropping off, I feel like I’m hitting that two-week resistance point again. My lifestyle in 2023 made it pretty easy for me to spend an hour every evening writing a post, but I’m in different circumstances now, which makes me wonder if there will also be some new challenges in gaining momentum here.

Another difference is that I’m not posting as part of a shared challenge, alongside other writers. Before, seeing everyone else’s commitment and progress made me want to carry on as well. Even if the day’s post wasn’t the best, it was part of something bigger, so it was still worth doing: at the end I wanted to be able to proudly say I completed the challenge.

Now, if I feel up front like I don’t have a good post in me, there’s a voice in my head that can say, “well, what’s the point?” And I don’t necessarily have a good answer to that all the time.

At least for today, I decided to do what I normally do when I don’t have anything I feel like writing about, which is to go meta. I try to avoid it, because it feels somewhat like a crutch, but it does help get me started, because it lets me start with exactly what’s on my mind.

What’s interesting is that I thought I would write just write a bleak post about this feeling that I was losing steam, and this doubting voice that makes me feel like there’s no value in these kinds of posts. But when I try to put my thoughts into words, my writing voice comes out much more hopeful. It starts to remind me of things I was ignoring, like how even if I start with nothing interesting to say, I always manage to work my way into one or two really interesting ideas that I’m glad I took the time to put down in words.

This is the really wonderful, comforting thing about writing, which I’m grateful to have discovered through this journal. No matter how I feel when I start, the simple writing process itself helps draw something a little something valuable out of me, even on my most uninspired days. I can always just start from whatever’s top of mind and let my fingers do the magic. With that in mind, I feel more confident saying there really is a point to keeping up the habit.

Have you ever hit a wall two weeks into trying to start a habit? Do you find writing helpful in sorting out your thoughts? Is your writing voice more hopeful than your inner voice? Let me know your thoughts at my Ctrl-C email: gome ​@ ​ctrl-c.club.