Last night I was listening to an episode of Glennon Doyle’s podcast, where she was talking about how her whole writing career started. Her sister, Amanda, intuited that she was meant to be a writer, bought her a computer, and told her to write every day. So Glennon sat down every single morning, wrote down ALL of her thoughts, and EMAILED THEM TO HER FRIENDS. Can you imagine?! I get overwhelmed just getting a monthly newsletter from somebody. Anyway after a while, one of her friends had the courage to passive-aggressively email her an article with step-by-step instructions on how to write a blog… and then clarified: “Blogs are for people who have as many thoughts and opinions as you do, but don’t wanna lose all their friends.”

Message received, Glennon created a very bare-bones blog, and then from 8-9am, she would sit down in her kids’ playroom upstairs, and write about whatever was on her mind. At 9am, no matter what the article looked like, she would hit “post.” (Then 5 years later, she got famous. Well, she wrote a a piece called “Don’t Carpe Diem” that lead to her getting famous. So, blog-famous and then later book-famous, which still isn’t all that famous. Have you heard of Glennon? Anyway she’s pretty famous.)

The 9am deadline to post part blew my mind. As you already know, I haven’t been posting very much lately, and it’s partly that I’ve been kindof a mess this past year; partly that I’ve been working on other things that won’t see the light of day for at least another 6 months; and mostly, that I have this horrible tendency to only sit down to write a blog post when INSPIRATION STRIKES. And then, even when inspiration strikes, this post better be THE BEST THING PEOPLE HAVE EVER READ, at least, today. Read any anecdote about the process of a prolific writer, and they all say to write every damn day, no matter how tired or uninspired you feel.

I want to take a page out of Glennon’s book and at least TRY to do this. I mean, I sat down to write at 8:30am, it’s 8:47am right now, and I’ve already barfed out two paragraphs! Surely in an hour, I can get something up and onto the internets. Maybe I could even just cap it at half an hour. That’s enough time to barf out some thoughts, and do a quick check for spelling mistakes and dumb shit I may have thought was funny for 2 seconds but will haunt me for the rest of my life if I post it. Like the poop content of my last post. Anyway.

I have been writing “morning pages” for over a year now, almost every day- and it has dawned on me that, while Julia Cameron meant for these pages to be the place where you get out all your garbage thoughts so the real creativity can follow immediately after- they are kindof having the opposite effect on me! I get out all my BEST STUFF in these pages as I’m sipping my coffee, and then it never sees the light of day. Why write a blog post if I’ve already satisfied my urge to write? Of course, there’s something very pure about writing just for the sake of writing, and not needing constant validation from the masses. This is such an unattractive and common trait these days, especially from privileged white folks. There are also some things I write in my morning pages that should very well fucking STAY in those morning pages, like petty complaints about coworkers, or this passage from October 11th:

“Trying to get the apt up and running. I see so many things to fix- so many things to buy- and do I really need them?! I’m slowly trying to coax myself out of some of it. A giant sectional couch. That George will surely destroy. But damn, the orange Vallentuna would be nice. How much would that cost, having 2 sleeper modules and 2 normal modules? I could buy a couple at a time?? Or maybe I don’t need a fucking double guest bed, just a single. I could leave my TV there in the corner, on a bench with wheels to be rolled out into the center when watching movies. The projector is starting to feel like a pain in the ass. “

Riveting stuff. But you know, the beautiful thing about a blog is that I’m not forcing anybody to read these posts, should I choose to write every day- and every so often, something I write that makes me feel good might just make someone else feel good. Plus it’s only 9:10am (edit: it is now 9:41am), I have just proven to myself I can knock out a perfectly mediocre post in under an hour (over an hour). So I’ll see you back here tomorrow am, to fill you in on who the fuck knows!