A mid-year check-in

Pause to celebrate your wins

I hit another slump with this weekly writing thing.

It’s hard! I haven’t given myself deadlines like this in… maybe, ever? If a job or a friend gives me a due date, I’m on it. But holding myself accountable is more challenging.

I really didn’t feel like writing anything beyond what was expected of me this week. My self-imposed Friday deadline loomed over me as Monday turned into Friday evening.

Like someone continuously opening their fridge in hopes that something new and enticing would appear, I would leave my desk and come back while my draft page remained blank.

Eventually I pulled up my dashboard and idly scrolled through my previous posts. It took several scrolls to get to the beginning. And that brought some color to my grey, uninspired mind.

Wins I hadn’t acknowledged surfaced: 32 entries! Never missed a Friday for over half a year! I published no matter what, even as clutch as minutes before midnight!

It was a nice reminder of why I’m even writing to you this Friday. I wanted to build a habit of consistently writing for fun. It didn’t have to be my magnum opus or even good. It just had to be done every Friday. And if the writing made me proud, or made an impression on someone, double win!

That’s where my post on the importance of showing up stemmed from. In the same spirit, I think it’s also important to pause and reflect on one’s progress. Maybe that’s what this slump is teaching me. Here it is, and look what it took to get here so far.

Cheers to that.