2025: My first year of writing consistently
That’s a wrap! The year 2025 has come to an end, which means my previous writing experiment has concluded. So, it’s time for another review!
Let me start with the best part: I’ve managed to publish one article per week, every Sunday morning, for 23 weeks in a row!
Never before have I been able to write so consistently, so looking at the list of my articles fills me with both joy and pride.
And all it took was a change in the way I approach writing. Gone are the days of trying to hammer out complete articles in long, uninterrupted, fear-inducing sessions of tight deadlines and high expectations. Nowadays, I try to write a few paragraphs of content every evening, when the rest of the family has gone to bed. And, amazingly, this new approach works well for me!
Despite those successes, however, I’m still wrestling with one big problem: my fear of failure!
You see, I never actually committed to publishing one article every week. It just evolved naturally, without me giving much thought to it. But with every article published, the weekly cadence began to feel more and more like an obligation.
At first, this didn’t cause me much trouble. I completed articles faster than I published them, which led to a queue of articles just waiting to be published. Even if I didn’t complete an article in time, I was still able to publish something.
But over the last couple of weeks, that queue dwindled down to zero (because I have begun to write more difficult articles and those took longer to complete). Without the queue, I’m now worried about my ability to deliver something in time every week.
And unfortunately, worrying triggers my fear of failure. For some reason, it feels like missing even a single week would turn this blog (and by extension myself) into a failure!
I know this is absurd! First, I’ve never committed to publishing once per every week. Second, no one depends on my writing. And third, failing to publish one article certainly won’t nullify all my previous work.
And yet, I am really worried about failing. So much so that I’m constantly torn between two opposing paths: either give up writing entirely (flight) or to hang in there and push through it (fight).
The flight response is what I’ve chosen so often in the past. And no wonder: my mind frequently feeds me thoughts like “it would be easier to just stop”, “no one cares about this anyway”, or “I’m just wasting my time here”. I recognize these thoughts for what they are: an act of self-sabotage and an attempt to stay in my comfort zone.
But I don’t want to give up! I like writing – both the process and the finished articles. So I want to at least try to push through it. The question is: how can I make it easier for me to succeed?
After thinking about this for a while, I came up with a couple of ideas:
- Publish less frequently (e.g. once every other week)
- Publish whenever ready (instead of a set schedule)
- Take a break from publishing (to build up queue of articles)
- Deliberately fail to publish (to confront my fears)
It took me a while, but I made my decision: I’m going to confront my fears!
After all, one of the main reasons for this blog’s existence is my desire to get better at writing. And confronting my fears is what will teach me the most.
More concretely:
- For the next month, I’m going to write on 21 out of 31 days
- I will fail to publish an article in one of those weeks
This might sound silly to you (it does sound silly to me too). But I do know that it will be hard for me nonetheless.
PS: just one day after finishing this blog post, I came down with a nasty infection. I had some gruesome days, which made me forget this blog entirely. And so I’ve already delivered on half of my commitment: I failed to publish this very article! And – who would have known – it was no problem at all.