On Writing Every Day for Five Months, Part II

The writing every day did get easier, but I would still have days when I would get stuck. For example, today I am stuck. I am presenting tomorrow about the past few months. I kept really nice logs on this site, and so there is a cool linear record of my process. But it still feels odd, and I still do not feel like I know what I want to talk about.

I finished my presentation, thinking if I finish my presentation, I would know what I want to write about here. But it didn’t help me as much as point to me where there is just a blank spot in my mind where the ideas should be.

I am watching Harrison Ford’s lifetime achievement award acceptance speech, and it is beautiful. I get very touched by actors who find their people in other actors, as he had, and get to work together, and find great joy and humility in being in this kind of engagement with other people.

This is not an experience I have ever had — to be acting with a group of people, for the sake of delivering some kind of result, to ourselves and to an audience. I had done a small amount of acting for the sake of play, but I hadn’t for the sake of digging deep, and creating a shared experience with other people who I am in direct contact with, to then create a shared experience with other people who are in the room, as in stage acting, or not in the room as in film making.

I try to go to a stage performance, of something, every so often. I am overdue.

One of the things about writing every day for this long is that it’s hard to do without any feedback, and you start to notice spots where you do want the feedback.

It does feel, like a beautiful exchange, and it does feel very deep. Even having a few people interested in your work makes a difference.

On one of the days, one of the coaches told me, when it comes to editing and finishing it up, to think about my already-existing readers who have been kind to me. It has been very interesting, to wake up and see a notification of somebody liking one of my posts that has an exceedingly random title.

What is missing, from this presentation, emotionally?

I was just thinking, about how interesting it has been to look at my own material, more than one time, in various contexts. I look at that picture of the lava hot springs I wanted to perfect more, and seeing the imperfect version in another setting still does something for me. I just made this presentation today, and it is a recursion to see it here on this blog post, especially given there are screenshots of other blogposts in the presentation.

I just had this thought, when I googled it, and saw this thought written out as the first link:

It is a simple enough answer, but it can be surprising how hard it is to get to that answer. You can add emotional layers by going through another iteration of thinking through the emotional layers. Like pressing a “reroll” button.