Okay so I've made so many drafts of posts I want to write for this, but I always end up feeling like it they aren't Good Enough to be posted. Or maybe I stop writing halfway through because I'm trying too hard to make it a professional, well-worded essay about my thoughts on a topic. It's certainly not productive of me, so I'm going to say "screw it!" and write out a post that I can put up.
It reminds me of an exercise I recall seeing somewhere. It suggested scribbling all over the first page of that nice, brand-new sketchbook you've been meaning to use but are afraid to because what if it's not good enough? I'm someone who has definitely fallen victim to wanting to save my sketchbooks for "good drawings" and then never using them because I don't let myself try in the first place. It kind of feels silly to be treating a blog, of all things, like this, but I suppose it is what it is.
Maybe I don't even need my post to be that long. I have this concept in my head that it has to be a well-thought-out essay on some topic I really enjoy, but I think this first post can just be a shorter one. All it needs to do is open the gate for me to be less restrictive with my writing. That just reminded me of something a friend of mine does. One of the student media organizations I am a member of is a sketch comedy show, and my friend Michael was one of its showrunners last semester. Some advice he often gave out at writers' meetings was to just write without filtering yourself for an hour or so, and then go back and clean it up. I ought to take that particular piece of advice more often.
