Where are my words, dammit?

Argh! Why is it so difficult to keep writing? For someone who considers himself a writer (that would be me), I am consistently inconsistent about writing. I return to my blog now and then with the intention of writing so much more and regularly. I’m too embarrassed about my most recent undertaking to write every day that I won’t even link to the post.

When I think about writing I just feel this little hurdle in my way and I turn right and do something else. I don’t really know what that hurdle is, exactly. Some days it feels like writing is too much hassle because I have to –

• load my blog,
• log in,
• create a post,
• write it,
• populate the SEO plugin fields,
• find a featured image,
• publish the post and then go make sure the article shared neatly on Twitter, Facebook, Google+ and Tumblr.

I am almost certainly over complicating the process here so that also feels like a hurdle at times. Did I mention none of this is rational?

Other times, I think about Medium and how nice it is to write there. Then, just as that thought forms fully and starts to inspire my hands to starting typing the url in my browser, another part of my mind gets outraged because, after all, I wrote a pretty long article about how you really shouldn’t trust your beloved words to some floozy 3rd party platform like Medium. At this point the inspired impulse to go write on Medium with its beautiful interface just sighs in disgust and drops the whole idea of writing altogether.

Every time I think about publishing my work on a platform that is not my free-standing, self-hosted blog, I feel like I should apologize to Kevin Marks for betraying the Open Web.

I don’t know when I made this writing thing so absurdly complicated. People manage to maintain a blog over time. Others just write on Medium or other services and live contented lives. Somewhere along the way I managed to lose sight of the simplicity of adding text to a page (virtual or tangible) and became snared in a self-critical/creative feedback loop that forced Inspiration to start drinking heavily and snarl at the world.

I love writing, I really do. I love the Open Web and want it to thrive. I also really like Medium because it actually does simplify the writing process. I just haven’t figured out how to reconcile it all and not feel like I’m giving in to the Man and Screwing The Open Web Guy while selling my soul down the commercial river.

Man, writing used to be simpler. Pen, paper, stuff comes out and you go out feeling creatively satisfied until the next time.

Where are my words, dammit?

I just came across Jennifer Garam’s post titled “Finding My Voice Again” which is worth reading if you found my little rant somewhat interesting. She touches on similar themes.