Bad Habits New Beginnings

I want to write more. I want to write full stop. I used to write. But I got lazy, I got a job and I got 21st century syndrome. When it's easier to open Facebook, Twitter, Instagram or any other social media platform, switch off, disengage brain and become a living zombie, it's often the option we go for. It feels like you're doing something, and you are. But what you're doing is scrolling through, for the most part, completely irrelevant and uninteresting photos, posts, videos, gifs or whatever they next invent. You'll be surprised how easy it is to fritter away huge chunks of time doing this meaningless activity or idly reading news articles pretending they are of some importance to your life. 10 mins here, 5 minutes there. 10 minutes waiting at the stop and then 15 on the bus. During your lunch break, toilet break, fag break. And before you know it you've wasted over an hour of your day contemplating videos of cats, envying your friends and their holiday photos, reading about someone completely irrelevant to your life doing something unimportant in a place you've never been to before. That's about 5% of your day. 5% gone. Whoosh. Multiply by 365 and you've spent over 5% of your YEAR doing nothing, achieving nothing and giving nothing to your life.

But I've gone a bit too far for a tad too long. This wasn't really why I decided to pick up my electronic pen today. No. But it set the scene. So to get back to the initial point, I want to write more. And the only way to do this is to force myself.

So from now on I will make myself write here and hit that publish button 4 times per week. I would love to write everyday, but it's better to be realistic and not set the bar too high. It's not a fear of failing but just a strong realisation that aiming for 4 and hitting the goal is better than aiming for 7, doing 3 and giving up after two weeks.

This project has a start date but no end date. And there's no plan, no schedule developed further than publishing an article, some musings, a story, memories, a travel blog or whatever it may be here 4 times a week. There's no minimum or maximum word count, although writing 100 or 100,000 words seems pointless and improbable respectively. In fact, I'm not even sure where the word count is in the backend of this blog.

I want to be more creative. We only have 1 life, and whilst you can always earn more money you can't create more time. I want to feel like I'm doing something with my life and I've always enjoyed writing. I'm by no means a good writer, at least not yet, but hopefully this project will encourage me to get better, to improve my writing skills and help me express myself more fluently, more articulately, eloquently, proudly and colourfully. That remains to be seen.

I've always felt like I have stories in me. I feel like I could write a book. But any sort of concrete storyline is missing, as is the writing practice. So no point throwing myself in the deep end trying to pen a 300 page novel, it will only end in tears. Or more likely a horrific effort about 20 pages long. I hope this exercise will help me to organise thoughts, potential ideas for stories, and let me practise putting the metaphorical pen to paper.

So here it begins, a bit rambly I know but that, quite frankly, doesn't matter. What matters is that I've started. Now to continue. And before you ask, yes you probably are the only person reading this. I'm not promoting my writing anywhere and don't expect or want people to read. That's not the point. This is an individual exercise for me and my brain. If you happen to join me for any part of that journey then hello, welcome and thanks for coming.