Unpublished. Unreleased. Words that will start giving me a headache if I sit on my work for too long. If you keep things under the wraps for too long, they can go stale. I know that I’m enjoying creating and making things but how will I get better at completing things and shipping them? Why can’t I combine all the single, lonely, paragraphs sitting in various separate notes into an essay? Would they be happier in an essay? Or do they want to be left alone? Do they feel complete already?
Or can they create more when they come together? More impact? More.. something. More of what, though? Why is it important that I complete things and ship them? What am I hoping to accomplish with all this? What will creating impact get me? Whenever I go down this train of thought, I don’t generally like it. But it’s important to think about this too, from time to time. Obviously, I suppose, someone resonating with the things you’ve written can make them feel… something?
Someone once told me that some of my notes were a healing experience for them and that of course, was quite incredible. Generally, I write because I can’t not. So what is it, then? Why am I stopping here? Why do I get stuck here? In this tension between “I do it for myself” and “I want it to have some impact on others”.
What if it wasn’t a tension, though? What if it was “I do it for myself” and “I want it to have some impact on others”? What if both those things are true and I just need to work a bit more on bridging the gap? What if there are many ways to bridge the gap and I what if I just haven’t looked at this space with a broader mind?
What would impact look like, to me? What can I hope to achieve with the stuff that I write?
- Inspire, guide someone the way my heroes have inspired or guided me
- Make someone see something in a different way— which might lead to them learning something new
- Help someone get in touch with any of their own feelings, feelings they may not have been able to make space for otherwise— and as a result create some resolution in them
- Evoke new feelings (because sometimes we consume art to of course— feel new feelings)
I suppose this makes sense. I know this is pretty generic, but these are just measures. I’m not trying to convert them into targets. Or I’m not trying to “achieve” these. But these would be good ways of measuring impact, if I wanted to do that.
So, yes, if I want more impact, then I would want to “complete” things and ship them. Of course, completion will look different in different cases. I don’t always need to do long-form writing. I know that short-form writing (especially in today’s world) can create impact too. And I’m okay with the process around this. I know when a piece feels complete, and when it doesn’t. I guess the tricky part is when I think I’ll “come back” to something but then I mostly don’t. Maybe then it’s important to regularly review the incomplete things and see if they can be given life. Maybe I don’t want to always be starting new things. And I do enjoy going through my notes anyway. In another essay I wrote the other day, I did come to the conclusion that completing things can be worth it for two reasons:
- It allows you to start new things with more joy
- It has the potential to create more impact
But it’s still a bit of a “brainy” “work”y activity. It’s not joyful in the same way as simply the dots and the scribbles are. But then the answer to that is always that the more you do it, the better you might get at it and ultimately— completing things or shipping might start becoming easier too. OR, I just accept the fact that #1 is reason enough to do it.
That is to say, if I want to keep creating, I have to complete the things I have started. Maybe a version of my hell is all of my abandoned ideas floating around me. Maybe my task is to just complete ideas and ship them, and just accepting that only 60-70% of the work will be joyful. But that 60-70% of the joy might be good enough for me to put in the effort for the non-joyful aspect of the thing.
And it can be, actually, more joyful too. For instance, I spent an hour earlier today doing some organisation and that was actually not unenjoyable, once I was engaged in it. The right tools, I suspect, can make the organisation, the completion, and the shipping sufficiently enjoyable.
I suspect this post is in fact a result of some of that organisation. Because I made some space in my brain, I had some more ideas today, so I realised I was starting new things without completing previous things. This is okay, too, because I’ve at least made a note of the things I do want to complete.
Or maybe I’m realising that the brain space gets filled up regardless of what you do. I’ve had this thought before too. That being better at todo lists may or may not make life easier. I mean, I may get “more” done but it’s not necessary that that will provide sustaining or persisting comfort. Ultimately, the comfort has to come from other ways. If currently writing and “doing more” is my reaction to filling the voids, that’s okay. But I may need to be more aware of what the voids are saying too.
untitled atm 