Me, Myself, and this blog

(This is an example of what I write for 750words.com. This was today’s entry and was motivated by this get satisfaction thread. Here is the stats page for this entry so you can see how it all works.)

I can already tell today’s writing is going to be a wash. It’s almost 1pm and I haven’t gotten to it yet. I definitely find that the earlier in the day I spit this out the more creative I am for the rest of the day. That said I also think I do my very best writing in the afternoon or evening so this is more of a grease the wheels thing. Of course, if I don’t get to it in the morning then I’m bummed and stressed that I need to get it done and that is on my mind for the rest of the day until I sit down and make it happen.

I don’t mind the pressure to do this every day but the pressure that I haven’t done it yet in the day gets to me for some reason. There has already been a discussion between folks today about the point system here and what is a good motivator and what isn’t. There is a point awarded for every time you write 0 to 750 words without any interruptions greater than 3 minutes which would imply you wrote without distractions like getting up to go to the bathroom, making a phone call, eating, checking e-mail or twitter, etc. Just siting down and pounding it out. I actually really like this and it forces me to get the flow going and just spew all over the page. Usually by about 300 words I have my groove on and I just keep moving until I know I’ve crossed the 750 line.

I go out of my way to make sure that I don’t have things that are going to bother me for 15-20 minutes at least, half hour is better but that is generally what I need to make this happen. I got really freaked out the other day because I heard a delivery truck pull up when I was mid writing and I thought I was going to have to answer the door. It’s not so much the distraction that causes me to lose the point that bothers me, it’s that the threat of losing the point forces me to get into a writing groove that I can’t get into when I’m stopping to think or do other things. If I break the train of thought for any reason then I have to start all over again and it takes another 300 words or so for things to get moving again.

This is not a feeling shared by my friends. J is upset with the distraction point because he says he can’t focus on writing because he’s too worried that he’s going to miss that point by thinking about something. T agrees but actually doesn’t like the points at all and wants a way to hide them all together.

I don’t know, I think if it wasn’t for the points and the ranking that goes along with them I’d rather just be writing in a text editor on my own machine. This would give me more security and a totally stress free environment to do that in. The opt in stress of the points and the consecutive daily streaks is incredibly motivational for me and even at the height of my writing peaks I’ve never written as much in as many days as I have since I stared this project. There s something about this set up that really works for me and I think I’d be really bummed if it changed away from that.

Of course I could keep up the writing on my own and just track my word counts and consecutive days but I feel like I’m accountable to the site for some reason which works better. If I was just doing it on my own I feel like it would be so much easier for me to just blow it off on a very hectic day or tell myself I’ll just write more tomorrow to make up for it. I can’t do that with 750words.com which I like. I have to write every single day otherwise I have to face the fact that I didn’t. I can’t just pretended I had a good reason which is what I’d do on my own I think.

I certainly understand that isn’t the same thing with other people and each person has their own motives and reasons for doing this or writing in general but I’ve found that this daily brain dump, all in one shot, don’t think about it, just write, works really well for me. For instance, this is just over 750 words and took me barely 14 minutes to write. Go!

The other day lawyer involved in a federal criminal trial asked me to explain, briefly, what exactly it is that I do. I couldn’t do it. This is something I’ve tackled before and that I need to get better at. As much as I like people not knowing what I do, it’s hard to pitch my services or answer questions when then come up, or even explain why I’m valuable. I’ve had people before say they know I would be useful on their project but couldn’t explain why. I thought that was cool, but I think maybe someone, likely me, should be able to articulate it.

When trying to explain I usually mention a few specifics and hope people can put those pieces together. I mention running Metblogs, and note that it’s the largest network of city specific blogs on the web. I point this out to show some knowledge of both online communities and local media. I causally mention sixspace and random music things to show that I haven’t been 100% online forever and have strong creative aspects that play into my thought process. I mention consulting for companies and artists to help them understand the web and how to interact with their customers and fans better. I mention organizing events to show that I can bring people together for common causes. Recently I’ve also mentioned setting up hackerspaces and helping build a tech ecosystem in Singapore. This ends up being a very wordy description that is all over the place. Some people see the common threads, some people are left spinning.

Ignoring the specifics of any job or clients, and speaking from a much more general vantage point a lot of what I do can be described as a collection of curating, community organizing, and pattern recognition. There was a time when I liked to call my self an entrepreneur but the fact of the matter is that making companies has never been my passion. Running a record label, an art gallery, an blog network, and now a hackerspace – none of those were about some exciting business venture as much as they were about an exciting community that I wanted to be a part of, and the best way to be a part of something is to contribute and give something back to it.

Now this approach hasn’t made me rich, but by and large it’s made me happy and since I know a lot of rich people who definitely aren’t happy I think that’s a win. Granted the reason I think I need to explain what I do a little better is that I need more people to pay me for doing it, so I’m not saying money isn’t important. I like to have insurance and know that my power isn’t going to get turned off as much as the next guy, and honestly I need to be able to afford to travel to stay in touch with the people and groups that keep me in touch, and keep me useful. So of course adding more money to the above equation equals an even bigger win.

But that isn’t the point.

The curating I think is the point. It’s the common thread that I never really noticed. With the record label I curated bands, not ones that sounded like each other, but ones that complimented each other. With the art gallery, admittedly I didn’t personally do a lot of this, but the goal was to curate artists, not ones that looked similar but ones that visually and creatively worked well together. With the blogs we are obviously curating cities and bloggers within them, as well as the stories we cover in those cities. With events it’s curating the speakers, not so they are all talking about the same thing, but so that what they are talking about tells a bigger story. I’m not sure yet what the specific curating angle of the hackerspaces is, but as I get deeper into it I suspect its going to have something to do with the projects we tackle and how they end up playing with each other and inspiring offshoots.

Curating depends on pattern recognition so perhaps one is a subset of the other. But curating is traditionally used in reference to art, and clearly that doesn’t fit the bill here.

In some respects I’m a bit of a cultural curator, but that’s just a piece of it. Is there such thing as a community curator? If there is I’m a bit of that too I suspect. It’s hard to explain because so much of what I do is not seen by the public. It’s not even seen by clients because it’s a behind the scenes collection of fitting pieces together that aren’t intended to click. A friend recently said that what I do is black ops, which I like and is fitting in a whole other way.

I know I haven’t answered the question yet, but if I had the answer I’d have had no reason to write this post.

I’ve been doing the 750 words project. This was today’s entry, it’s 779 words. I’m posting it publicly to hold my own feet to the fire. And because I need my ass kicked.

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Write motherfucker.

What are you waiting for? It’s not going to get any easier. There are no brilliant ideas that are just waiting 30 more minutes to jump into your head. Everything to have to say is there in your head right now, just waiting for you to type them out. So what are you waiting for. Fucking write already.

It’s easy to blame the distractions. Twitter. Facebook. Email. They are all a short command+T away, but that isn’t the problem. You are. You let those things get in the way. You are the one who chooses to look at something else. You are the one who lets the page stay empty while the day ticks away. The world will never stop for you, it’s up to you to block it out when you need to. If you don’t, it’s no ones fault but your own.

I started this 750 Words project because I wanted to force myself to get in the habit of writing every day. I’ve missed more days than I’ve completed and no matter how much I want to do it I still need to talk myself into it each and every day. Today marks my longest consecutive stretch of writing each day and it still took me until 9:50pm to find 30 minutes to write this. And I’ll face the same battle again tomorrow.

I should be doing it every morning the moment I wake up. I shouldn’t let myself do anything until I finish but I’ve achieved expert level procrastination. I’m a excuse magi and can justify magical levels of putting-it-offy-ness. But I have to fight through that and do it.

I’m the only one I’m doing this for, so I’m the only one I’m letting down by not doing it. I’m pretty OK with disappointing everyone else, at least I’ve come to terms with the fact that I am who I am and I can try my best but even then I can’t be sure someone somewhere won’t be disappointed, hell maybe everyone will be disappointed but that’s just the way life works. But I can’t disappoint myself. I can’t let myself down. If nothing else, at the end of the day, at the week, at the end of this whole life, I have to be able to look back and know that I did my best and know that even if I fucked up, even if fucked up huge, I tried to fix it, I tried to do the right thing.

Right now that means even though I haven’t written every day since I started this, I’m writing now and I have to keep at it. I have to make amends for not writing. I have to accept that I blew off several days, and try to make that right by not blowing off any more. I have to do it for me. Be cause if I can’t do one thing a day for myself, especially something as simple as finding a half hour to write 750 words then what is the point?

There is no reason to do something if you aren’t going to try and do it for real. Why start a 750 words a day project if you only plan to do it every other day, or once a week? Why set yourself up to fail? Do or do not. There is no try. If you aren’t going to actually do it, then don’t even bother.

If you are going to do it, then fucking do it. No excuses. No exceptions. No wiggle room. Just write. Every day.

This is the conversation I have with myself almost daily. I had it when I was working on the book, the book that is still half finished collecting dust. I’d write every day, and then miss a day, and then next thing I know I’d have missed a month. Then months. This 750 words project is my bootcamp. I’m going back to basics and teaching myself routine. It doesn’t matter what I write, I just have to write. 750 words every single day. To get in the habit. And once that is nailed, and I can do it without fighting with myself all day. Without the rest of the world stealing my attention. Then I can worry about what I’m writing and then I can worry about writing something good and then I can worry about writing something that I want to publish. But I have to like it myself first. And I have to write it myself before I can like it. So that is the task at hand right now. Every day.

Write motherfucker. What are you waiting for?