It’s October 1st, which is the first day of my self-imposed writing challenge. Every day in October I will be writing at least 500 words (or 2 pages in a journal). Any day I don’t meet this goal, I will need to pay $50 to one of my friends who is doing the challenge with me.
Why do I want to write more? To me, writing is a way to communicate and connect with some of the other critters who happen to be roaming this same earth. Through honest and clear reflection, I can express myself and participate in a tradition that unifies civilization. Writing makes me feel like I’m part of something that transcends ink on a page (or pixels on a screen).
But honest, unfiltered writing is hard for me. Doing well in school came naturally to me, but once it became clear that I got good grades just because of the way my brain was built, the success felt meaningless. Instead, I began to see communication as a contest. The satisfaction came from knowing the rules better than whoever was enforcing them, and figuring out ways to cleverly slip by.
How many requirements could I test out of? Could I do so well on my midterm exams that I didn’t even have to take the final? How much of life could I get through by slipping through cracks in the system that no one else seemed to notice?
This certainly worked, but it came at a cost. My success was about identifying the loopholes no one else had noticed, exploiting them, and then zipping my lips about how I hacked the system. I could write excellent essays and reports, but none of it came from the heart.
A past version of me would have done something like this: get ahead by writing 5000 words the first day and then take the next 9 days off. I love doing shit like that. I love feeling like I checked the box while outsmarting the rigid, arbitrary guidelines. But I’m tired of living like that. I want to do what is intended. I want to write without guile or malice towards the assignment. I want to learn to let my thoughts flow naturally onto the page.