It's Not Easy To Write Daily; Come Rain, Come Sun

One significant task I do everyday is writing, writing my daily blog posts. It involves an unpredictable amount of work. There are days it's easy, lots of ideas of what to write about and plenty time to do the actual writing. But those days are fairly rare. Most days I am short of ideas or time, or both.

Most of the work is not in the physical act of typing out the article but in the mental work of figuring what to write and how to structure it. The most annoying part is that the mental work often swallow up hours of thinking and rethinking. In fact, it takes all the time to when it's near deadline for posting the article for the day. It taught me the power of deadlines. It is amazing how an impending deadline give one instant clarity. Now I just go on with my other tasks till it's almost deadline to posting the article and, thus, rely heavily on the deadline to work its magic.

Surprisingly, the days I write my best and lengthy non-tutorial posts are the days I am not feeling happy. I am most deep and emotional in my posts on those days. I just keep writing and don't feel like stopping as the words keep flowing. That day's writing is my therapy, helping me get back my balance.

The days I dread most are the ones where I don't have both any idea and time. Days I have training classes that require me leaving home super early and maybe I have to drive there. I usually try to write the posts for those days on the day before. And that is a sure source of headache and poor sleep. My brain won't settle for any post idea and it won't let me sleep or do anything else besides thinking in a circular fashion about what to write. I hate those moments. The only partial fix I found is to do a technical how-to post or an Excel tutorial. But creative writing is usually a walk through frustration aisle.

My best days are the ones after a big event. The ones the posts write themselves.

Tout à fait, daily writing for the past three years has not been an easy task. It's been worth it, though.