Daily Publishing ☑️

I wrapped up my daily publishing experiment and began the next one.

On December 22, 2020, I began an experiment. I decided to write and publish a blog post/thread, somewhere between 250-1000 words, every single day for 100 days, and for no particular reason.

I did that, and during some pretty difficult times at work and at home.

It was easy. 👇

This, after a series of 7,000(ish) days during which I wrote a handful of things, all for very important reasons, and never published them. ~20 years, a few dozen unpublished things. 100 days, 100 published things (115 times if you count my PEN, another experiment).

So, apparently, I can write some things down and publish them. They don’t have to be great, or even good. I can do them from a blank page (on hard mode), and there doesn't seem to be much rhyme or reason to which ones resonate with people and which ones don’t.

There were several that I spent extra extra time on and never heard anything about. Then there were a few where I was totally phoning it in before bed after a long day and a whole bunch of people reached out to let me know it meant something to them. 🤷‍♂️

But I needed to be sure... Maybe anyone could post for a hundred days straight... Particularly as some kind of short-term goal. So I decided to continue the experiment.

Now 150 days in, I’m ready to call this experiment a success. It can be done. I can write something every day. In 150 days, I’ve written 70,000+ words of “original stuff,” spending about 30 minutes a day.

I find these results promising. Not because that's enough text for a novel and a couple screenplays. That way of thinking puts me in a sick place that I don’t like. It shuts off all valves of curiosity and creativity and enjoyment for me. I’ll admit though: It’s a datapoint.

Let’s take away every good thing that has come from this daily posting habit, which is a lot. Why else does it matter to me? Well, if I can write that much with no reason and no crutch in that small amount of time, I have a number of assumptions about myself that are false.

I can’t forget the conditions for this experiment: I wrote for no particular reason. Putting Reasons and Goals behind creative efforts was an experiment I ran from the age of 19 until... last year. Reasons and Goals don’t work for me. They do the opposite of their claimed effect.

So now, with the intention to carry nothing with me beyond my own natural curiosity, I begin my next experiment, which will not involve compulsory daily publishing.

This experiment is about taking this energy and directing it toward exploring the stories I like making up, and exploring them at least five times a week for at least 25 minutes.

I have no expectation that this will be as easy as daily posting was. So much of my psychology is still tied up in the damage I’ve done around creativity. Each one of these experiments seems to be healing that nonsense, but it may take a while, and that’s okay.

To be clear: Posts/threads may come out of some of these explorations. But they are no longer a requirement of the experiment.