“What if I Reach My 70s and Still Haven’t Managed to Write?”
A scary morning thought
I have been journaling since 2017. From 2018, I have approached it with a lot of discipline. In the initial years, I have written for days without a break.
While it is easy for me to write, it is still tremendously difficult for me to publish anything that I write.
“Inspired” pieces come out now and then. But daily, committed action to publish? Nopes. Not even at any regular intervals. If you look at my medium pattern, I have gone for years without publishing anything.
A scary thought…
…hit my head this morning. What if I go through life never doing justice to this “wish” to write for an audience? Never nurturing this dream?
What if I reach my 70s or 80s and look back on this life with regret that I was so worried about being great that I never even tried?
Does it matter whether I write great articles that inspire and encourage people OR great stories that entertain people? All that will matter is that I never tried, in this fear of being good or great.
I am a lot of things. May be even a coward at times. But I have never been someone who is not honest with myself.
This is not how I want to live my life.
What have I been doing wrong?
I am big on planning. I do tonnes of research.
Why?
Because that gives me an excuse to indulge in a fantasy without really doing anything about it.
Due to this “planning” I have read 100s of articles on systems and processes and motivation-to-write.
Unfortunately, that also gave me reasons to postpone the act of publishing.
I mean, I don't have a pipeline yet. I don't know my niche. I don't even have time every day to indulge in “free flow” writing.
I had stopped listening to my inner voice because it was so crowded by the voices outside.
I have been staying away from what I love because I needed to be good.
WTF.
I am doing this for myself. And I need to first be fair to myself.
So this is me tackling my fear of publishing, head-on!
