“I love writing, but I hate starting,” - Aaron Sorkin
I wanted to get this piece about writing off my desk before unplugging for a weekend away to celebrate my 31st birthday. I'm looking forward to spending the next few days in Annapolis, MD, where Blake's rented us a hotel room with a balcony overlooking the water. In addition to my joyful anticipation, I was also feeling contemplative. I worried about whether taking another weekend off from the blog after the pneumonia hiatus was really a good idea. I caught myself mid-thought, yelling at my stinking thinking. "No one cares! It doesn't matter!" and finally, "that's not the point of this."
Before this blog was an actual published page on the internet, it was a multi-month internal debate about whether starting it was the right decision. I had a myriad of concerns: would it be helpful to me? Could it be helpful to others? Would people like it? Was it too soon to start writing about my experience? Also, perhaps most dogging, would I be able to keep it up?
Having spent the bulk of my career in content creation, I can tell you that one of the common keys to offering any type of web content is maintaining a consistent flow. This is why content calendars exist. If you want people to go to your page, you need a steady stream of content for them to engage with there. I tell this to people on a regular basis and knew that the same would apply to my blog when I eventually started it. So, I waited, planning to stock pile pieces so that when I eventually published I’d have a content calendar rich with new materials to publish almost daily. That was the plan.
Let me pause here to tell you a little bit about my process.
It is, in a word, spastic.
I love the quote from Aaron Sorkin at the beginning of this post because it’s just so accurate. If I sit down at a blank word document and plan to write, that box of white is laughing in my face. I’ve learned over the years that I’m the type of writer who needs to come in with an idea.
I love writing but hate starting. The page is awfully white, and it says, 'You may have fooled some of the people some of the time, but those days are over, giftless. I'm not your agent, and I'm not your mommy; I'm a white piece of paper. You wanna dance with me?' and I really, really don't. I'll go peaceable-like. - Aaron Sorkin
A blank page isn’t somewhere I can take off from, it’s where I stick the landing.
By the time I approach a word document I’ve usually got the first few sentences outlined in my head. I’d love to say that the rest flows from there, but that is not the case.
Sometimes, more often than I can tell you, all I end up with is those opening lines. I have countless word documents with the start of something, but they’re just that… the start. TBD, pending completion on another day when the words come to me again. The recent beginning I shared from my first trip to Florida to meet Logan is a perfect example of this.
It’s just a beginning, and it isn’t even the beginning of a blog.
Not everything I write is for the blog, some things I just write to get out of my head and other things, like that particular beginning are part of what I hope will someday be a book.
It wouldn’t be right to say that I’m writing a book because what I’m doing is more like saving the beginnings of a million mini chapters in one computer folder (hey, at least I organized them into a folder recently, they used to be smattered across my desktop in mayhem.)
The point is, that even though I’m writing every day, it doesn’t package up neatly into a blog post a day and I let that hold me back for a long time.
I planned to launch this blog in January, but when I started applying for jobs I became a bit of a chicken about people knowing I was in recovery. An existential crisis, amazing recruiter and dream job later, that concern was no longer, but the content worries remained. For months, I agonized over whether I had enough content to go live, writing and re-writing and trying to build up a stockpile, while fighting this sinking feeling that in my attempts to have the “perfect” launch and content calendar, I was missing the opportunity to share my genuine self.
Thankfully, fate stepped in and forced me out of my on way. About three months ago the treatment center that helped me get sober this last time asked me to participate in video testimonials for them. Elated to be asked, I also realized that this meant my story was going to get out there, perfectly planned content calendar or not. I’d love to say that there and then I decided on a launch date and at least planned that, but it didn’t happen that way either.
“I think I want to publish my blog first, so that I have my voice out there already before the testimonials come out,” I explained to my sister over the phone one day. It didn’t feel real, for so long the blog had been this lofty dream. Even though I had the entire website built and ready for publishing, I still procrastinated. I asked everyone I loved and cared about for their opinions. I have a tendency to do that when I’m unsure.
“You realize you don’t have to do anything?” Blake reminded me one day as I lamented my self-inflicted dilemma. My initial thought was outrage at his not taking this major life decision more seriously.
While I’d love to say that more cool-headed feelings prevailed, I have to admit it was a sentiment I held on to for weeks. Like the mature adult I am, I kept those feelings to myself and held on to them. I over-analyzed them and grew them into a giant festering resentment while poor Blake unknowingly went about his life.
Have I mentioned I’m a work in progress, not perfection?
Unsurprisingly, this ended with me in tears one night as I told Blake his words had hurt me and that I didn’t feel like he supported me dreams. Again, please remember I am a project in progress, not perfection.
Finally given the chance to clarify the thing he’d forgotten he’d even said and I’d misinterpreted, Blake explained that he had said that in an attempt to take off the pressure I had mounted on myself. “It isn’t about the blog or publishing for people to read,” he said steadily and logically. “I just don’t want you to get caught up in publishing the blog and feeling like you have to satisfy readers and lose sight of what you’re doing all this for… it’s for you.”
Have I mentioned that my boyfriend is an incredible and loving person?
I wish I could say I’d listened to him wholeheartedly but part of my charm is that I often ask for advice and end up not being able to take it. With Blake’s support, I launched my blog content calendar in hand. But it wasn’t all perfectly planned out. In fact, the first piece I posted on amandaayako.com was one I’d written just the day before. It was one of those pieces that made me wonder if I was hurting myself by trying to hold them and smash them into a calendar. When I quieted down and remembered why I was writing it, I realized it couldn’t wait to be published. Content calendar be damned.
Since that day on April 28th, not a day has gone by that I haven’t thought to myself “shit I should post something today.” My content calendar is long-dead and the “evergreen” pieces I once saved to post during a slow week I have since deemed unworthy and banished to the bottom of the pile.
The morning I started this piece, I came across a neglected email from my host website, offering a look at my analytics from the previous month. “Shit,” I said to myself (this was 4:30 a.m. by the way) “I haven’t posted yet this month.”
I sat down to write this piece to explain why, but I didn’t really have a reason. I’d like to say I’m okay with that, but I’m not. I am, whether or not I like to admit it, extremely driven by the approval of others. It was my primary motivating factor for most of my life and I am still trying to unlearn that behavior. So when I realized that morning I had yet to post anything yet my inner critic was tsking me and telling me that no one was ever going to read my blog again and that I had failed. The result? The last thousand and three-hundred some words you’re reading now.
On days like today, I have to remind myself why I started this. It’s for me. So even though I feel crazy for just having spent all this time writing through this and am really questioning whether this actually needs to see the light of day, I also feel better for having written through it. Moreover, I’m excited to share it, because one of the most freeing things about starting this journey has been showing up, exactly how I am, the good, bad and imperfect. It may not be perfectly scheduled, or even regular for that matter, but it’s me. And that is, after all, what it’s all about. *
*Yes, I obsessed for about an hour over whether this sounded too conceited.