Writing.

I fancy myself a bit of a writer, but I don't have much to show for it. I have a Substack with exactly one substantive post from almost two years ago. To be fair, I do have a lot of drafts as well. Drafts I haven't touched in ages. Drafts I will sometimes work on in bursts and still never publish.

Writing is hard.

I wrote a lot in college, but these were mostly, as you might expect, college essays. I was a philosophy major, and my writing was well received by my professors, who I think were glad to have an honest-to-god philosophy geek who loved to analyze the subjects we were discussing. That was a good environment for me to write in, because I tended to be writing about something interesting, usually with clear guidelines and a deadline to meet. My Substack languishes because I'll have an idea, start writing, get bored, and decided to work on it later. Later, of course, does not exist. There is no such thing as later.

With no deadlines and no grades at stake, I've really fallen behind on the practice of writing. But practice is important. Your muscles atrophy if you don't use them, and the same principle applies to writing. I need practice, and ideally I'd like to practice writing somewhat differently than I did in college. So, I'm going to try a new thing. I'll be writing here, on Leaflet, with the goal of publishing something at least once per week. These will primarily be shorter pieces and mostly top-of-the-dome stuff. They won't be polished or even necessarily organized well. They will, however, be mine.

Here are my ground rules:

I think this is a pretty good plan. I'll take the energy and motivation I have to write, and I will harness it by actually writing. And at the end, I'll have something to show for it. I think this gives me both flexibility and reasonable constraints, which hopefully will create the right environment for me to actually write.

If you're going to join me by reading along, I appreciate it.