I just worked out that, if I include what I am writing right now, I have 37 posts left to write before my challenge is complete – before I’ve published something every day for a year. If I’m totally honest with you, that last post can’t come soon enough.
You always think you know what something is going to be like before you do it, and you are always proved wrong if you actually follow through and do the thing. I suppose this is what makes life so damn interesting – sometimes you’re a little off the mark; sometimes your guess was on another planet. Either way, it’s only through direct experience that you can ever put your theories to the test. Only by getting out of your imagination and into reality can you ever know.
Well, after more than 300 posts in as many days, I don’t have to wonder any more. If anybody knows, it’s me. I know what it’s like to have this one thing on my to-do list month after month. And after October 4th, it won’t be on there any more.
Oh, I’m not giving up writing. Quite the opposite, in fact. I’ve decided that, free from the daily obligation to publish something, I’m going to instead get round to exploring the vast backlog of ideas I’ve amassed over the past year – things I never felt I had the time to give the attention they deserved, because I always had to get on with that day’s post!
And you know, that’s been the main discovery of this challenge, which was an exercise in being prolific – in shipping something every day… that in the end, I don’t want to be prolific for its own sake. I want to see what happens if I actually spend time with my pieces and let them germinate and evolve instead of getting them away from me as soon as possible like they were mosquito on my leg. I’d like to share what I’m doing only when I think I can do no better.
Lastly, thank you from the bottom of my heart for sharing this journey with me, and for giving me your precious time all these months. If something I’ve written has made you be sweeter to yourself, then I have done my job. And I’ll be back, 37 more times, before I let myself have a little bit of time off.