Tonight’s post is brought to you by the letters F and U, and is about the inability to write something specific.
I have another domain that I intend to use to post my many, many, many stories about working in customer service, help desk, and tech support. It’s basically set up, it’s just waiting for me to start posting things so that when it does go live, there’s more than one post on it. I probably want to start with 3-5 longer posts before it actually launches.
I have a long document that’s got all my notes collected over the years; weird things customers have said to me, observations about tech and customer behavior, quirky problems I found the solution for. I just have to, y’know, pick a few, flesh them out into a post, and post them to the tech blog. I just… don’t.
I don’t know why I don’t. My brain, my motivation, my habits, are an undiscovered country to me. Although I believe, on an intellectual level, that were I to pursue a diagnosis of ADHD, that I could succeed in getting one, I don’t actually have that diagnosis. What I do have is a feeling that my brain would probably fit many, if not all, the criteria for that diagnosis, which has been garnered from reading posts by other people that do have that diagnosis talking about the way they think and react. Those posts remind me of me and how I act. Which means, at some level, that I believe I can’t be motivated the same way a lot of other people are. I need more stimulation, more urgency, or more interesting things to focus on.
Is that why I’m not writing these posts, though? They are stories I’ve lived, stories that, at the time they happened, were interesting to me. And I do need some income, which, in theory, this blog could generate for me, through ads, affiliate links, or eventually becoming the source for a book collecting these stories. And my financial situation is dire, more dire than it’s been for a long time. I need income and the normal “apply to jobs, get interviewed, get a job offer” process is not working as well as it has in the past.
For whatever reason, though, the interest and urgency and personal nature of these stories is not getting me to sit down and even start writing one. Maybe… maybe that’s the trick I need to do. I just need to set a timer for 20 minutes, open a blank document, and start writing. See how I feel once I get something down into words. “Just write” is advice I’ve gotten from amazing, talented, and successful writers. I just need to start.
As just one example, I’ve managed to turn this whole complaint about not being able to write into a 500-word post. And I think I’ve said something real, something true, something… vulnerable, ugh. How did I do that? I opened a blank page, put my fingers on the home row, and started typing out what I feel. If I can do that for this topic, I can do this for any topic. Starting is the best motivator.