writing.as.amit

I have redirected this domain to my main blog. I would not be publishing any more posts on this domain. All the posts have also been migrated to the main domain. If you were following my posts via RSS, first of all, a big thank you! Plus, I would appreciate it if you follow my main feed. It's the same me there.

This was fun while it lasted. I have captured my reasons for moving away from the platform in this post. I will keep this place and the posts around for anyone who stumbles onto it.

I have been thinking a lot recently about self-discipline and doing things I love. I want to understand why I need self-discipline to make myself do things that I love. There can be two reasons for this.

There's an inherent dichotomy between the things that I love and the things I want to believe I love. Maybe I don't love love journaling. Or meditating. But I want to believe I do. Hence, I need to fit these into my routine, or I just won't do it. On the other hand, I do love reading blogs and non-fiction. Or mysteries. So, I don't need a routine to make myself follow people's feeds. Or read books. If this is the case, how can I separate things that I love from those I want to believe I love?

Another reason might be that the things I love aren't easy for me to do. I haven't mastered how to meditate. Or to journal. They don't come naturally to me and hence, even a feeble friction — late nights or a busy work schedule or an unplanned travel — derails all my attempts to do any of these regularly. I need self-discipline to force myself to do such activities regularly (and patiently) as only through repetition will I master them. Only then would they start coming naturally to me.

I am yet to be convinced of the real reason. Maybe it is both; maybe neither. Whatever the case, I continue to force a routine on myself for I know of no other path to self-discipline.

“Self-discipline is overrated. I should do what makes me feel good.”

“Just doing what makes me feel good makes me lazy. I need self-discipline.”

These are the two extremes I hop between. I would love to be in the middle somewhere. Self-disciplined enough not to be lazy, yet allow myself space to do what I love. Is attaining such a balance a myth? And what do I love? What does make me feel good?

Is it anything that's frictionless or passive, like watching TV or clicking through YouTube recommendations? Or is it something that lends me a hollow feeling of achievement? Like reading random “intelligent” posts that I have no interest in? It must be neither. It is both.

Irrespective of which extreme I find myself at, I subconsciously judge how I spend my free time. It can't be healthy. But I haven't yet mastered the way not to be self-judgemental.

Here's what I want to achieve. Be self-disciplined. To do things that keep me void of any guilt. But shouldn't those be the things that make me feel good? As a result, won't self-discipline make me lazy?

I came across this prompt a while back, which I had no opinion on. I wanted to attempt to elaborate my thoughts on it now.

If someone looked at how you spent your time over the last year, would what they see as your priorities match what you see as your priorities?

They won't.

I had set health and focus as my priority for the year. Even after starting the year well, I didn't spend enough time on any of those. What's worse is that towards the end of the year, I was numb enough not to attempt doing any of them.

The results are here to show. I am distracted. I am not in the best of my shape.

Is it time to set them as a priority again, then? Nope. It is time to discover why my attempts were derailed later last year.

I published less number of posts in 2023 (183) than in 2022 (346). Why did I write almost 50% fewer posts?

I gave up on the system that worked for me earlier. I didn't stick to any for long. I forced myself to write daily. But then I also let myself slack for a day. Before I knew it, I was missing repeatedly. I wrote daily. Then I didn't for months.

Does it matter that I wrote fewer posts? What if I wrote longer posts? Isn't more number of words better? Shouldn't I find out if I did?

It is, and it isn't. My love for long-form writing isn't hidden. I enjoy longer posts more. But if they come at the cost of not writing for a long stretch, I am not okay with that. I don't write research-heavy essays. I don't write in structured form. Writing regularly helps me distil my thoughts. I work a long post while I write, publish and discuss a thought through multiple micro-posts.

A downside is my tendency to publish micro-posts only as they are effortless. Even with these, I hold myself back as I do not want to post too many posts in a day. I realised this in 2023, and I reduced publishing micro-posts. And eventually, I stopped publishing any posts. I overthink, admitted.

I won't vacillate between these two extremes any more. There has to be a middle ground. I am okay with writing less but want to do it regularly. Give thoughts a chance to churn to generate the best ideas.

Extraordinary results are a matter of repeating ordinary actions over a long period of time. Start with ordinary.

This quote from this week's issue of Mark Manson's newsletter came timely as I was already contemplating this in the context of my #writing. So. in that context, here's my plan of action for my writing in 2024.

• Write less in each sitting. Publish more posts.
• No number of posts in a day is too many.
• Miss a day, sure. But not two.
• Any words are acceptable for a post. Even one. Write and publish that.

I would love to look back at my writing journey towards the end of 2024 and see at least 366 posts published.

Every morning for the past few days, I plan to sit and jot down my thoughts sometime during the day. As the evening dawns and I sign off from my work without #writing anything, the weight of unpublished thoughts pulls me down. I console myself that there's still night to come. I would be surrounded by silence and calmness. No distractions with everyone deep asleep. The perfect conditions for me to write.

Even though, I know very well that waiting for such perfect conditions is futile. The fact that I haven't written anything these past few days proves the point again. I can never expect to get into the flow of writing if I wait for the conditions to be exactly right.

Seth Godin has succinctly captured this thought in his book The Practice.

We do the work, whether we feel like it or not, and then, without warning, flow can arise. Flow is a symptom of the work we're doing, not the cause of it.

I write when I sit down and write. Not when I am thinking about writing. I have identified a process that works for me. I need to stick to it.

But should I write even if I don't feel like writing? Hadn't I read someone recommend never to write when I am tired? What if I am tired right now? You know what? The lazy in me loves to listen to others when it suits him. I need to shut him down. I need not overcomplicate things.

I love writing. I need to write. If it means, at times, I need to force myself to stare at a blank editor with a blinking cursor, so be it. Word will flow.

Plus it stops me from feeling like shit.

As much as I love my routines, I have recently struggled to keep one. Although there are some that I regularly follow, I lack a daily routine of any sort, whether in the mornings, evenings or through the day.

I know the routines are essential, mainly to free up some mental space for the creative work. It makes sense that “regular work processes allows workers to spend less cognitive energy on recurring tasks, which can support focus and creativity for more complex tasks.” I then find it surprising that I have a complicated relationship with my routines.

I wake up, sleep at fixed times, and have a chain of habits associated with the time after and before. But nothing else sticks.

I don't have a time blocked for focused work. Or for my hobby projects like writing. I then wind down every day feeling frustrated not having achieved what I thought I would at the start of the day.

While ruminating over these struggles in my journal, I stumbled upon a realization. I cannot follow a daily routine because I lack a work-life balance. But unlike the pre-pandemic period, it is tilted much towards #life. Because I am always working from home, I surround myself with distractions while working.

My family, my pet and their stories. The apps on my iPad and my books. My home. All pry for my attention. And I am not strong enough to fight any of that for long.

When I visited the office, I had a clear separation of what I did and worked on while at the office. At home, that separation is difficult to attain. It's funny that this separation of space was considered important during the pandemic's early days. The only difference is that for others, it was not to get drained by work and leave some time for life. It is not to let my home life muddle in my work life.

This has had a predominant effect on my writing. I tell myself I can do it anytime, so I don't do it at any time. Why do I need a creative block marked in my calendar when I can read, write and think any time I want?

Unfortunately, given how lazy and prone to procrastinate I am, I do.

I witnessed a minor accident today that brought back memories of a similar yet contrasting incident I was part of a few years ago. A car brushed a motorbike parked at the roadside today, and the man sitting on the bike had a tumble. He cursed. The car stopped. The driver alighted. Sensing nothing as alarming, they laughed at the situation's futility in a somewhat anticlimactic moment.

What I faced all those years back was far from ordinary, though.

On a late morning that day, I was driving my regular route to the office. There is a section with many overpasses, and they always get busy during peak office hours. A safe driver, I had held my lane and stayed there. I don't usually drive fast, and I wasn't even that day.

And out of nowhere, a forward jerk and a crashing sound warned me something had bumped into my car from behind. I peeked into the rare view mirror and saw a man in the middle of the road, a motorcycle lying a few meters away. People crowded around him, some picking him up and others doing the same to his bike.

Like a good samaritan and fearing the worst, I parked my car to the side and strode, worried into the crowd that had ballooned to almost fifty.

A scruffy guy in his early twenties was standing at the centre, multiple people checking him for injuries. I was relieved to see him standing, moving, shaking himself off the dirt. At least my worst fears were unfounded.

And then, out of the crowd came a question that jolted me, “Kisne thoka isko?” – who hit him? Right away, I knew things could soon get worse than anticipated. I was rushing for answers, justifications, and truths for the bulging crowd on why I wasn't at fault.

Someone touched my shoulder and said, “In bhaisaab ka gaadi hain”. It is this man's car.

I knew my justifications wouldn't work with this crowd. They wouldn't even give me a chance to tell the truth. A guy walked towards the sweating me. I fumbled, searching for the right first word. But before I could utter anything, I heard a voice. “Mera galti tha. It was my mistake. I was driving fast, lost control of the bike and crashed into the back of this person's car. It wasn't his mistake.”

I heard a few audible sighs. The voice of a man who has just been in an accident and his admission of the mistake made the crowd lose all interest.

As the gathering started to dwindle, I breathed a sigh of relief. I walked to the guy and asked him if he was okay. I offered to take him to the hospital if he was hurt. He declined. Though scuffed at a lot of places, he was okay overall.

Strangely, a few people left were getting restless again and hurling enquiries at the guy. I felt a hand on my shoulder. A man in his fifties leaned and whispered, “Saheb tumhi nigha ata. You should leave now, sir. You shouldn't have stopped at all. Things could have gotten so out of hand.”

Though I was stunned at that moment by the heartlessness of this stranger's advice, deep down, I knew his remark had some merit.

In a world constantly on the verge of annoyance and hostility, was staying back when I knew everything was fine a mistake? I didn't have the courage that day to find the answer. After all, #life had to happen.

Every day that I don't write makes writing again more difficult. I don't because I convince myself what I write next needs to be significant. I don't have anything meaningful to talk about. Why does it need to be meaningful? And meaningful for whom?

The most meaningful thing I do is live my life. Isn't everything happening to me, around me, of the most importance? Why won't, then, #writing about it be meaningful? It is to me and that's all that should matter.

I don't write for readers to find meaning in what I have written. I write to calm myself down. I write to focus.

No surprise then that every time I stop writing, I am more unsettled. The restlessness is not the cause of my block. It's the effect.

I don't know how to be social. I can't use the social media tools. I am a user of many. I don't use any. Or to be fair, I don't know how to use them. I would passively scroll through the timeline and yet not respond to any of the posts. Not that I don't want to. However, I don't know what to say. Or how to say it.

I feel awkward interacting with people I don't know.

Maybe that's who an introvert is.

Even in real life, I take time to comfortably open up with others. I am that silent, awkward guy hanging around in a group. Not knowing who and how to talk to someone.

No wonder then I feel the same discomfort in the digital space. What troubles me is I just end up wasting time not using these tools in the manner they are supposed to be used. I don't benefit in any way by using the services.

So why am I even on these social media sites then?