Enough about the past, onwards to the present. I found something exciting happening as I was planning out writing this blog.
First, I created a posting schedule. No more than once a week, posted on Thursday. If I don’t have ready for that Thursday, I don’t post for the week. Simple enough, nothing special there.
Once I had my schedule, I wrote my first post. As I was writing, my subconscious flooded me with concepts for additional posts. By the time I finished the first post, I had taken notes for a half dozen posts to write. After a few days, the queued concept-posts quickly grew. Still nothing special here, hopefully, I have enough ideas to write about this topic for a while.
At this point, my Boredom philosophy came into play. Creating the blog and the first post or two was a rapid burst of energy. I completed that in a couple of days. Having to write a blog post every week though? As soon as one post went out, I would have to start thinking about the next post. Blah.
I felt a bit suffocated. I could feel the anxiety increasing. I wanted to be Bored, but it’s hard to be Bored with something hanging over my head. I had to change something; otherwise, I knew I would abandon the blog altogether. So I thought about guidance my wife had mentioned about doing for some of her content creation.
For her stuff, she intended to queue up a couple of months of content even before launching any new effort. I also thought about an artist I've been following, Walter Ostlie. In his vlogs, he'll discuss his schedule for drawing pages of his comics. He aims to be weeks or even months ahead of a publish deadline so that he has time to do all the various non-drawing tasks required to have a completed page. That also gives him a buffer in case he's not able to draw for a few days or weeks. Genius. Following their example, I decided to write as much as I can in advance.
You might have noticed that I’ve included a (Written YYYY.MM.DD) at the bottom of my posts. That’s the day I wrote something. For example, I wrote this post on 1/15 but assuming my schedule remains the same, plan on posting it on 2/7. I figured since a lot might change in that amount of time, I should document when I wrote something.
This system seemed good. I was able to bust out a few posts right away, then was buried with work and couldn't touch the blog. Got back on it and wrote a few more in two days. Got sick so took a day off. Now I’m back at it and hope (crosses fingers) to be able to knock out three more in the next three days. As I’ve gotten further ahead in my posts, my anxieties have gone down.
And this is where I realized I had changed. I felt I was becoming bummed that I didn’t have the free time to be Bored. I missed the feeling of having nothing to do — no looming deadlines, no tasks filling my head. I missed roaming the house looking for things to clean up or quick projects to knock out. Even though I had written down the posts, so I didn’t have to remember them, I still knew they were there. I wanted them gone.
You could say that in my quest for Boredom, I virtually eliminated any desire to procrastinate.
(Written 2019.01.15)
First, I created a posting schedule. No more than once a week, posted on Thursday. If I don’t have ready for that Thursday, I don’t post for the week. Simple enough, nothing special there.
Once I had my schedule, I wrote my first post. As I was writing, my subconscious flooded me with concepts for additional posts. By the time I finished the first post, I had taken notes for a half dozen posts to write. After a few days, the queued concept-posts quickly grew. Still nothing special here, hopefully, I have enough ideas to write about this topic for a while.
At this point, my Boredom philosophy came into play. Creating the blog and the first post or two was a rapid burst of energy. I completed that in a couple of days. Having to write a blog post every week though? As soon as one post went out, I would have to start thinking about the next post. Blah.
I felt a bit suffocated. I could feel the anxiety increasing. I wanted to be Bored, but it’s hard to be Bored with something hanging over my head. I had to change something; otherwise, I knew I would abandon the blog altogether. So I thought about guidance my wife had mentioned about doing for some of her content creation.
For her stuff, she intended to queue up a couple of months of content even before launching any new effort. I also thought about an artist I've been following, Walter Ostlie. In his vlogs, he'll discuss his schedule for drawing pages of his comics. He aims to be weeks or even months ahead of a publish deadline so that he has time to do all the various non-drawing tasks required to have a completed page. That also gives him a buffer in case he's not able to draw for a few days or weeks. Genius. Following their example, I decided to write as much as I can in advance.
You might have noticed that I’ve included a (Written YYYY.MM.DD) at the bottom of my posts. That’s the day I wrote something. For example, I wrote this post on 1/15 but assuming my schedule remains the same, plan on posting it on 2/7. I figured since a lot might change in that amount of time, I should document when I wrote something.
This system seemed good. I was able to bust out a few posts right away, then was buried with work and couldn't touch the blog. Got back on it and wrote a few more in two days. Got sick so took a day off. Now I’m back at it and hope (crosses fingers) to be able to knock out three more in the next three days. As I’ve gotten further ahead in my posts, my anxieties have gone down.
And this is where I realized I had changed. I felt I was becoming bummed that I didn’t have the free time to be Bored. I missed the feeling of having nothing to do — no looming deadlines, no tasks filling my head. I missed roaming the house looking for things to clean up or quick projects to knock out. Even though I had written down the posts, so I didn’t have to remember them, I still knew they were there. I wanted them gone.
You could say that in my quest for Boredom, I virtually eliminated any desire to procrastinate.
(Written 2019.01.15)
