Some time ago, I'd read about an organizational method called GTD (Getting Things Done) by David Allen. For what it tries to do, the method is fairly good and I currently use a number of his suggestions. One of the major "rules" is to figure out, for every and any goal that you have, one specific question: "What's the next step?" What's the next physical or practical thing to do in order to move the thing forward? Well, for me and on this topic, the thing to do is simply to start spending a half hour a day writing something on the blog.
Another story I'd heard is also a motivator for me. The prolific novelist James Michener, it is told, wanted to be a writer from a very young age. When he was in high school, his father told him to get a job for the summer. But James argued that he'd wanted to be a writer and go to a class about writing, or some similar activity in pursuit of his interest. His father said: "Okay. If you want to be a writer, I'll help you out. I'll hire you as a writer, but only on the the condition that each day you write 10,000 words. I don't care if it's the same word, or jibberish, or whatever. But it must be 10,000 words each day. If you can do that for the summer, I'll pay you the minimum wage per hour for your work." James agreed to do so and brought out his typewriter. For the first week, he wrote whatever came into his mind, without thought or grammar or sense. By the second week, he'd become bored with all that and he began writing things that made sense. And, he said, by the end of the summer, he was pretty well on his way to being a writer. Nice story.I don't pretend to be anywhere near writers like Michener, but the principle stuck with me. If you want to do something, you just have to start the damn thing and see where it leads. For me, this is what I'm drawn to do right now - even in the midst of many, many other things that demand my attention - and so I'll make the time to take the time, and we'll see where it leads.
