DRMacIver's Notebook
January is a daily writing month
January is a daily writing month
I’ve long been a disbeliever in new years resolutions, but I’m giving them a go this year. I’m calling them “New Years Aspirations” rather than “resolutions” because that makes me feel better about them.
My three aspirations for the year are:
- See my friends in person more.
- Write more.
- Continue to improve my health and exercise levels.
Aspiration 3 is a bit of a cliche but in my defence I’ve been working on it for about four months already, so it’s not a fresh start so much as a “that thing I’m already doing but more so”.
Aspiration 2 is the main focus of this post though: I’ve not been writing recently. My last newsletter issue is from September! Literally more than 3 months have passed since I wrote a newsletter issue. I don’t like that. I feel bad about it, but not in the sense that I owe it to anyone, I feel bad because writing is an important part of my life and I’ve not been doing that. So I’d like to fix this.
Unfortunately the reasons I haven’t been writing are pretty clear: I’ve been busy, and I’ve been depressed. Both are still true.
Still, it continues to be my belief that the trick to getting out of depression is to do slightly more than depression is telling you is reasonable. Not vastly more, but a bit more. This helps you relearn what is actually possible and gradually broadens the boundaries of your life-world, helping ease the depression. At least, that’s the theory.
Right now, writing newsletter issues feels intolerable. So instead I’m going to write daily notebook posts and see if that manages to rebuild the habit and thought processes of writing. Maybe I’ll write some newsletter issues this month, maybe I won’t. We’ll see.
The astute observer will note that this is coming out on the second of January. I’m going to put out a catch up post immediately after this one and count this one as yesterday’s post.
Don’t expect a high standard of writing this month. To start with I’m just going to do draft bankruptcy from the newsletter. After that I’ll probably do Tarot prompts whenever I don’t have a good idea what to write about. Most of them will be short, and will end whenever I feel done with writing them rather than coming to a tidy conclusion.