Tag Archives: writing

Just keep blogging…

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I came across this post, via a Facebook memory, which was posted 5 years ago today. ‘Journaling Out Loud’, in which I stated, “I’m sure there are some people that wonder, ‘why would anyone want to do this anyway?’ That’s actually not a bad question. For me, I love to write and I wasn’t doing enough of it. The self-created obligation to do so inspires me to make the commitment.”

And I also shared this quote,

“For years, I’ve been explaining to people that daily blogging is an extraordinarily useful habit. Even if no one reads your blog, the act of writing it is clarifying, motivating and (eventually) fun.“ ~Seth Godin

I think my total readership has gone down in the past few year. Social media shares used to get a lot of clicks but I don’t pay and I’ve noticed that organic visits to my posts have dropped dramatically… while I’m simultaneously seeing my feeds full of items from people who pay subscription fees. Membership has its privileges.

But I’m not worried about readership nearly as much as I am about the act of writing… as well as clarifying and developing my ideas. I take pride not in accolades but rather in commitment. I write Every. Single. Day. Some days are really hard. Many days I’m just going through the motions. But I hit that publish button every day.

I get to share my artistic expression, my imagination, my thoughts on interesting topics. I also keep my commitment to healthy living by frequently referencing my routines and challenges on my blog.

And sometimes the words just flow. They dance from my brain, to my keyboard, to the screen and say exactly what I want to say with just the right word choice. On those days I hit the publish button with delight. It doesn’t matter if this flow state comes to me once a week or once a month, that’s enough to remind me of why I journal out loud every day.

And so I’ll be back tomorrow. For now I’ll just end with my blog byline, shared in a post many years ago:

“Writing is my artistic expression. My keyboard is my brush. Words are my medium. My blog is my canvas. And committing to writing daily makes me feel like an artist.”

So absolutely unique

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I’m listening to some music I enjoy listening to in the background while I write. I have songs on a ‘Writing’ playlist that I’ve heard many, many times. I know the music and it doesn’t interfere with my thought process. The weird thing is, despite hearing these favourite songs of mine hundreds of times, I don’t know the lyrics to any of the songs from start to finish. They really are just a background thing for me.

I think about my use of music in this way as an example of how unique each of our brains are. My daughters would know every lyric by now. My wife would be able to play the piano parts in her mind the way my daughter could replay the lyrics. And even my daughters would appreciate different aspects of the songs from each other.

We actually don’t have a clue what music appreciation really means to another person. We don’t really know how they experience the tone of a note, or for that matter the tone of a colour…. Is my experience of the colour red the same as yours?

What about how we experience pain? Or the way we feel emotions? How unique is my experience of these things compared to yours? How alike are my sense of joy or sadness like yours, or like anyone else’s?

Some of these experiences might be, probably are, similar. But I know my experience of music is drastically different from my family. I know that when some people feel sympathy others feel empathy. For some people going through a similar experience could result in anger, frustration, futility, disappointment, or some other emotion that I would not feel in the same situation. Because my felt experience is not like yours, and yours too is one-of-a-kind.

The great mystery is that we can never truly know another’s felt experience, and they will never know ours. This is it, we each get this one, incomparable, absolutely unique experience. And no one will ever know how ‘this’ experience is experienced.

Take a moment to appreciate your uniqueness, and value the thoughts and lived experience that make you… you!

The double dip

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A few months back I started doing my meditation on my treadmill. It started because I was in a writing slump and my blog post writing was taking too long to write… Not leaving me enough time to do 20-30 minutes of cardio, meditate, and do a full weights workout on one body part before work. So I started to double dip and do my meditation on my treadmill. (Yes, I close my eyes, I hold the handrail and also wear the emergency stop clip… not that I’ve ever needed it.)

I actually find this a great combination. I do a walk with a weighted vest on incline, so holding the rail I’m very stable. I get a really good (Zone 2) workout, it’s not like I’m taking it easy. And I find that with my body busy, I’m better able to focus my mind on the guided meditation. And the bonus is that I’m getting two great things done.

Today I was struggling to write, very distracted, and decided to exercise first. I thought I’d double dip and write while on the exercise bike rather than treadmill, where writing would be awkward. 15 minutes into a 30 minute ride, I realized I wasn’t going to write anything while riding so I put on a 15 minute meditation to get me to the end of my cardio workout.

Five minutes later this post came to mind and I spent the next 10 minutes of my meditation and ride bringing my thoughts back to the meditation and away from writing this in my head. Essentially I made the meditation almost impossible to focus on.

This is the first time in a couple years that I’ve tried to meditate before writing, and I totally remember now why I do them in the order I do them. I can’t meditate knowing that I still have to write. I need the sense of accomplishment of my post to help clear my mind for meditation.

Essentially, I can only double dip in the right order, with a physical and a mental activity, but there is no triple dipping! Nor is there double dipping of two mental activities. I’m the poster boy of ‘there’s no such thing as multitasking’. For me meditation while I’ve got a blog post to write is an invitation to completely ignore meditation, or to inconveniently and ineffectively task swap so that I do neither task well.

Write first, then double dip exercise and meditation. That’s my lesson for the morning.

The urge to quit

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The value of writing every day is simple… I actually write every day. Skip today, well then skipping tomorrow is that much easier. Skip a couple days and suddenly a week is easy to miss… and then soon enough I’m not writing regularly. And then the love of writing and the act of writing get a divorce. Soon enough phrases like, ‘I used to write regularly’ become part of future conversations.

So I keep writing. But it isn’t easy. Even if I’m the only one reading this, I’m still a critic. ‘Am I being thoughtful or am I whining?’… ‘Poor Dave, writing is hard, isn’t it?’ Quite frankly, sometimes it is.

Sometimes life can be boring. Sometimes the things I want to write about can’t be shared publicly. Sometimes the creative juices just don’t flow. And sometimes I have to fight the urge to quit. I question how else I can push myself to write every day? I question if I should put this blog on hold until I retire?

The urge to stop is winning right now, but I know I have to fight it.

“Resistance cannot be seen, touched, heard, or smelled. But it can be felt. We experience it as an energy field radiating from a work-in-potential. It’s a repelling force. It’s negative. Its aim is to shove us away, distract us, prevent us from doing our work.”

~Steven Pressfield, Do the Work

I’m resisting the resistance. I’m doing the work.

Intersections revisited

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There are some things I write here on Daily-Ink, and when I read my own writing a month or two later I barely remember or even recognize my own writing. I wrote that?

But there are other things I write and I remember. There is one post in particular that I think about regularly. Tonight on (another) walk with my wife we reached an intersection where we were crossing the road. Perpendicular to us, on the cross street’s sidewalk, were two men who reached the intersection exactly the same time as us. We all slowed down to let each other pass. They were the only other people walking anywhere near us and sure enough we intersected at the one place our paths crossed.

Despite thinking about the following post regularly, I hadn’t actually re-read it in a couple years. I didn’t consciously remember that it also started with a walk with my wife, but what I do remember, what I reflect on when it regularly happens, is that we are somehow drawn to these intersections.

~ ~ ~

October 27, 2021

Human intersections

Last night I went for a walk with my wife. Minutes from home we were walking on a quiet, empty street that doesn’t have sidewalks. Then a car approached from in front of us. We started to move to the side of the road, and noticed car lights coming from behind us as well. The cars crossed paths right where we were on the edge of the road, having had to slow down to cautiously make space for us and the other car. Then we continued our walk with no cars approaching us from either way until we arrived home.

I find it fascinating how we seem to be drawn, pulled to intersecting points with other people. For the amount of times someone walks by our house, or the front of my school when I arrive before any students, I’m amazed how often I have to wait for a pedestrian to walk cross the driveway before I can make the turn… amazed that as I wait, I can see no other pedestrians for an entire block.

In a car you are turning left and must wait for the one car coming the other way to pass.

At a shopping plaza you go to open a door to a store and the one other person in sight is coming through the door the other way.

On a path in a park, you are walking faster than the people in front of you, and as you go to pass them, other people are approaching from the other way crowding the path at your takeover point.

I think we find ourselves at these intersections at a rate that is greater than probability would suggest… The likelihood of such intersections happen far more than just by chance. Like magnets passing one another, there is a pull towards others, an unseen force that draws us into each other’s path. It isn’t a case of bad timing, it’s not that we are unlucky and forced to slow down, wait, or squeeze by someone else. It’s actually just the opposite. We naturally seek each other out on some unconscious level. We are drawn to human intersections.

Avoidance is easy

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I’m back in the loop of struggling to write. It makes me truly appreciate the challenges of authors who do this for a living. Sometimes the words flow and it’s like a poetic dance between thought and expression. Words, and even full ideas almost magically appear on the page, leaving me uncertain of where they came from.

Other times I stare at the blank page, or worse, I avoid the blank page. I seek distraction and call it inspiration. I am looking in all the wrong places. I am literally uninspired.

When I feel like this avoidance is easy. The ‘simple’ work of developing an idea into a piece of writing is not simple, it’s hard. Really hard. Avoiding the effort of thought when the thoughts are not coming becomes a losing game. Maybe I’ll look here for ideas, there for motivation, or over here for… yet another distraction even though I don’t want to call it that. And that’s game over. Time not so well wasted.

Avoiding the blank page is easy, but it’s not productive. How many things do we do that are the equivalent of this avoidance? For some it’s avoidance of a hard conversation, for others it’s a big task, for yet others it’s the minutiae that needs to get done but feels monotonous. Some people find solace that different ‘stuff’ gets done when they procrastinate, but does that really result in a positive experience?

How much time do we spend in a state of busyness rather than dealing with business? Avoiding the real task by doing other things, or worse yet doing something that’s merely a distraction. Some things get automated, habits get ritualized, and the work just gets done. But sometimes the struggle is real. The action avoidance becomes the easy task and the work doesn’t become the work, but actually just getting down to work. Because once you start the work gets done.

Distraction and Focus

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I spent spent 45 minutes on social media. That wasn’t my intent, I have a to-do list that will take me a fair bit of time, and I haven’t don’t my normal daily routines, like writing here, yet. Now that I’m here, I’m focused. I have my headphones on, and my ‘Writing’ playlist playing softly in my ears. I know that I won’t be distracted, and I won’t get up from my laptop until I hit the ‘Publish’ button. I know how to focus, how to stay on a task until it’s done. The issue isn’t the doing, it’s the getting started. Once I’ve started, it will get done (usually) efficiently and (usually) effectively, (I’m far from perfect).

But the world is full of distractions. My phone is probably the biggest one. But so are things like feeding the cat, doing the dishes, television, and tasks that are easier to do than getting started on something bigger. Social media algorithms are designed to keep me engaged, learning from me, and pointing me to things that will keep me scrolling, liking, sharing, and wanting more. I’m not the only one. I love when my wife has to do report cards, suddenly she finds the time to bake, and I get my fill of things like chocolate chip cookies and banana loaf. As a 30 year teacher, I can tell you that she writes amazing report cards that really show that she has put thought into every report… every kid. But before she spends hours on the task, she bakes, cleans, and finds many reasons not get started.

Distractions can be useful, after all the cat does need to be fed and the dishes won’t clean themselves. But distractions can also be a complete waste of time. They can suck time up like a vacuum. A vacuum only sucks what you point it at, and likewise if you point your distractions towards a time-waster, that’s all it takes in. Part of me knows that I work a bit better when I have a deadline, and today I have one with a family commitment in a few hours that will take up the rest of my day. So, after being distracted for 45 minutes, I’m now wondering if I’ll get everything done that I hope to finish. How much less stress would I have placed on myself if I had used that 45 minutes better? Or would I have done the same amount of tasks but simply spread them out to fill the time?

I’ll never get rid of all the distractions I have, but I do think often about how to reduce the ones where I don’t use my time well. I battle with the joy I get from death scrolling on social media, and the thoughts I have about how much better I can use that time. What if I used that time for more writing? What if I spent that time with family and friends? What if I actually started doing archery again? Those are not things I would consider distractions. Those are things I’d like to focus on. Will they give me the same dopamine kick social media gives me? Probably not, but the dopamine spike doesn’t seem like something I should focus on.  That just seems like an empty distraction.

Saying it again

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Today I was going to write about the benefits of increasing protein in my diet, especially as I age. I came up with the title, ‘The Power of Protein’, but that sounded familiar so I searched my blog and found a post by that name, on this topic, written this past January. Then I thought about writing about ‘rinsing and repeating’ old ideas, but that seemed familiar. A quick search of my blog led me to ‘Rinse and repeat’, but I wrote that over 4 and a half years ago, in February 2020.

I ended that post saying,

“I’m sure this will happen again. I will have moments when my creative juices are flowing and I’ll share fresh ideas… or at least fresh ideas to me. And I’ll have moments when I end up recycling or repeating older ideas. The process of writing every day will lead to some repetition, hopefully though, the ideas I choose to repeat are worth reading and thinking about again. I probably won’t re-share this idea of sharing my repeats again even if I catch myself, but if you catch me doing this, please feel free to let me know.”

But I think enough time has gone by to be able to bring this topic up again. The reason is a bit of a realization (in two parts). First, I think some ideas are worth emphasizing. Saying or thinking something once doesn’t always sink in. Sometimes I need reinforcements, and the writing process reinforces my thinking. For example, while I eat more protein than I did a year ago, I still don’t eat as much as recommended by people like Dr. Rhonda Patrick or Dr. Peter Attia. So writing about this again makes me think about increasing my intake.

Secondly, I’m not some guru that knows a lot about everything. I have passions and interests and that’s what I enjoy writing about. So when I’m writing about some topic yet again, I’m ok with that… Because I’d rather write about something I’m passionate and interested in, rather than forcing myself to write about a topic I’m less interested in, just to add more variety to my writing.

It’s more of a ‘rinse and re-emphasize’ rather than repeat. So, despite previous saying, “I probably won’t re-share this idea of sharing my repeats again even if I catch myself.” I just did it anyway. And I’m doing it to emphasize a different point: I will repeat myself! But when I do, I’ll do my best to emphasize some aspect a little differently. I’ll attempt to enlighten rather than digress… to rinse out new ideas, rather than just repeat them.

AI Image Fails

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I use AI images to accompany roughly 18 to 19 out of 20 Daily-Ink posts. My general rule is that I’ll try one or two requests and pick from those. I don’t want to spend 10 or 15 minutes of my precious morning schedule to search for images, they are the side quest, my writing is the adventure.

However, it being the weekend, yesterday I had time to play… and yet I failed.

Here was my original request for my last blog post:

When that didn’t work, I got more and more detailed, even pausing the requests to ask Copilot (which uses DALL•E 3 to create images) if it knew what a waterpolo cap looked like. It described it perfectly… then I got it to reiterate my request before continuing. This is what I got:

But the caps still came out with helmet masks and at no point was the shooter facing the net. I finally gave up and cropped an image. Here is what I used, and then the full image:

Below are many of the fails. I recognize these are not common requests, and the images have some redeeming qualities, but there is still a way to go when it comes to AI text-to-image requests. So, when you see a less-than-perfect image added to my Daily-Ink posts, please recognize that I’m trying, but I’m not wasting time trying to get everything just right… I’d rather use that time to write, meditate, or exercise.

Distraction versus Inspiration

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Parkinson’s Law states: “work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion”.

My morning write has been like that recently. I’m not writing more so much as I’m procrastinating getting started. Then by the time I get to this point here in my writing, I’m already going to need to rush some of my routine after writing. It’s a procrastination routine that doesn’t work for me and yet I go back to it. I allow myself to be distracted. I permit myself to not look at the blank page and pretend that distraction is actually inspiration.

Distraction is not inspiration. It has appeal, it seems like an attractive path to a new idea, but it is not. No, the quick email check isn’t going to inspire a good idea. Neither will the red notification on my phone app, nor will social media… All distractions.

How often do we do this? How often do we justify our distractions and lack of focus? We also allow ourselves to procrastinate by getting other stuff done that isn’t the task we really should be doing. The ‘To Do’ list gets smaller but the more immediate tasks still sit undone.

Work expands not just to fill the time allotted, but to just beyond that time. Then the pressure builds and suddenly I achieve more in less time than I thought possible. What just happened there? I had a lot of time and I got too little done, then I feel the time crunch and get it done anyway. Rushed, stressed, but done.

This isn’t my regular modus operandi, but rather part of my productivity cycle. Some days I’m flying through tasks feeling like I’m unstoppable. Other times I’m keeping busy, but not necessarily focused on what needs to be done next. But when I do this at work, I’m still getting stuff done. When I’m home, when I’m trying to get inspired to write, I’m actually just distracted. Other things aren’t getting done, nothing is happening except I’m losing time.

Inspiration can come when you don’t expect it. You can take a break and insights can hit you unexpectedly. But intentional distraction is the enemy of creativity, and choosing a distraction is never the seed of inspiration. Creativity does not strike evenly, but it does strike more frequently when avoiding distraction. If you are hiding from the work, creativity will be elusive. Distraction distracts you from inspiration and creativity.