Spend time on something you can earn money from, moron.

I thought I would have next to no concern about writing on a website no one knows about.

Every time I sit down to write, I worry that I need to know more or know something different to bring credibility to my post.

Because everyone else seems to be writing about something important. Or, something interesting that I didn’t previously know about.

Because no one would ever be interested in me sharing my thoughts.

One of those is true, and consistently overrules the other so consistently that I actually managed to write a book before starting to share shorter musings right here, on the big bad internet.

So that’s cool.

The stories I tell myself when I sit down to write are riffs on:

What are you even writing about? Who cares?

Spend time on something you can earn money from, moron.

But, because (apparently) I’m stubborn af, I keep sitting down and buckling in to these self-scoldings.

Where do they - these clearly quite shitty stories - come from?

There is no precedent for posting my prose online, and there is no precedent for my prose online bothering anyone else (other than myself).

So, what I appear to be doing is the definition of getting in your own damn way.

I’m getting in my own way of writing words in a google doc. Of re-reading them to make sure they’re (reasonably) coherent. Of posting them in an unlit corner of the internet.

I’m getting in my own way of situating my writing where I truly am, which is somewhere between what you do for work and online trolling my peers for carrying Stanley’s.

Positive self talk is the retinol of mental health.

We all claim to be using it, yet the truth is it’s not hard to spot cracks in our application.