Well, Crap

It happened again.

I haven’t posted for a month. And the that post, the one a month ago, started with me apologizing for not posting in a month. Sigh.

But it’s worse than just a patch of missed posting. Because this happened with my last blog, too. I recognize the mental dynamic at play here, and it’s worth another sigh.

I’m an over-thinker, see.

I think, overly.

It can work in your favour, sometimes. It makes me thoughtful, a careful planner, thorough.

But it can also work against you. I can get stuck in a rut at times, going around and around in mental circles, rather than just saying “Ah, fek it” (you have to read that in Dara Ó Briain’s accent) and acting.

Based on previous experience I would say that blogging has a tendency to pull me into that rut more than usual.

What happens is, I get stuck in the feeling that I need to post meaty, interesting posts. But those take longer to write, hours. When I’m feeling stressed for time, it feels like hours that I can’t spare.

But the longer I go without posting, the more I feel that my next post needs to be interesting, weighty. Which means that a kind of mental block is setup – whenever I think about blogging, I feel like I need to spend hours AND I feel like I can’t spare the hours right now, so I put aside the idea of blogging “until tomorrow” or whatever. Rinse, repeat.

Gah, stupid brain! Stop doing that!

Ok, friends, they say that repeating the same behavior over and over and expecting different results is a sign of insanity. So I’m taking this as a sign that I need to change my approach here or it’ll keep happening, I’ll keep getting stuck.

So I’m going to take the pressure off myself for a bit and stop trying so hard to post Quality Content (TM). I’m going to aim for quantity, not quality, which goes against every instinct I have. But, as I said, my instincts aren’t helping me here.

I need to establish the habit of regular, consistent posting no matter what before I worry too much about the quality of the posts, or I’ll just fall into the old pattern again.

What I’m saying here is – I’m going to let myself shitpost.

Dumb memes, random brainfarts, whatever. I’m going to post it all.

May the Gods of Quality Writing forgive this wretched sinner. And may you, my audience (both of you) forgive me. I’m fighting a war against my own dumb brain’s nonsense, and I’m going to flail a bit before I establish a pattern that works for me.

I will come back to writing the last part of that retrospective at some point, but it’s grown too large a roadblock in my mind, I’m just going to ignore it until I feel like tackling it again.

Fek it. Just fek it.

Here, enjoy some Dara: