This is my first post on this blog.
I don’t have a whole lot to write about, but I’m using this post as a way to build inertia and make some progress. My typical mindset is to assume that unless a blog post says something worthwhile and unique, there is no point in writing the post at all. And so I don’t write. But, if I am willing to entertain the possibility that there is value in the mere act of writing a blog post regardless of the content, then I can write. Then there is no reason not to write.
I’ve read in more than a few places that to be a successful writer, one must simply write. True writers do not have the luxury of waiting until inspiration strikes to practice their craft; they must write even if their mind is blank and the words flow like molasses on a freezing midwinter morning. I like Steven Pressfield’s description in The War of Art:
The professional cannot allow the actions of others to define his reality. Tomorrow morning the critic will be gone, but the writer will still be there facing the blank page. Nothing matters but that he keep working.
And so I write this blog post, not because I want to be a writer necessarily, but because writing is a necessary skill for whatever kind of “professional” it is that I want to be.
School of Hard Knox 