This Was a Good Week

So, I think I've covered it a few times in the course of this blog already, but I'm not really one to toot my own horn needlessly.  I'm a firm believer in the idea that you can make something and really like it without being overly proud of it or anything of the sort.  Which isn't an odd thing to say, really, unless you've ever really had a confidence problem with your own projects.  Which is to say, it is and odd thing to say, since I'm sure we've all been there at one point or another.  I know I was there, making things, yet looking at them as if they were terrible things, trash, something you'd never really want to be proud of, because why would you?  But at a certain point, you've got to stop being ready to trash your own things because, well, maybe they're not so bad after all.

And I'm sure we've all been at the point where you just kinda sit down with an idea in mind, eager to put it to paper, real or digital (so to speak), but as soon as you start, you quickly start to talk yourself out of writing whatever it was, because now that you're actually going to commit, it's not good enough to write out.  And that's really what was getting in my way, before I started this blog.  It's not completely gone, but committing myself to writing something at least every other day has done a lot for my ability to sit down and produce, and produce things that I can be happy with.  And that's what really happened last night, some time after I wrote my post about MMOs.  (It's just the last post, I probably don't even need to link it)

I looked at it, and looked at the rest of the things I've written for as many posts as this blog displays at a time and felt a real, actual sense of pride.  Because not only have I come this far, just shy of 200 posts, when I just started in January, but I think I've really worked up some form of consistency in writing fairly well.  Obviously I don't think what I write here is going to be the best thing you read anywhere, anytime, but it's something I can be happy with.  Something that will actually give me a sense of doing something well.  And what was just a thought of something positive turned into something almost negative earlier when I recalled that thought with something clear away from the positivity here - dread.

After thinking of the good I've done this week, for myself, I turned that around into going "Well, no way am I going to keep that going", and as I often do, I turned to a friend to try and work it out.  When I mentioned to my dear friend Saki-Chan that I was worried since I didn't really know what to write about and I didn't want to, well, 'ruin' the 'streak' I was on, she offered a simple solution: 

"Why not blog about you?"

She elaborated on that by saying that I should probably talk about how I'm actually happy with what I've written this week, and how I'm happy that I'm coming along nicely with my 'goal' for the blog.  And I said, "That's a pretty good idea", because it's all true, really.  I think I've pretty much covered that I'm happy with how I've come along, though.  And it's not even that I'm happier this week than I've been in past weeks, it's just been one of those things where I really sat back and took it all in. 

I did it the other night when I realized, quite out of the blue, that I've been writing something a night (with only hiccups here and there that are weather-related) for seven months.  It honestly feels like just yesterday when I was tying my stomach in knots wondering if I really should 'bug' Chance about the thought I'd been tossing around in my head after reading his blog consistently for quite a few months, about the the thought that I wanted to do what he was doing too.  I'd never really bought into the idea of a New Year's Resolution before, but this January, I just decided to go with it.  Resolutions are supposed to be about doing something positive for yourself, right?

I had another one of those moments way back at the end of march when Chance gave me this ringing endorsement, and a spot on his sidebar for his readers to come and give me a shot for keeping up 'the good work' for just under three months.  I should mention that I get a pretty steady flow of traffic from there, so anyone who's come to read this from there, I just want to say thank you, because it really makes me happy knowing that other people apparently like what I'm typing up of a night.  I don't have dozens of readers or anything, which is fine, since this is mostly a project for myself and until just earlier this week, I think Monday after I wrote my review for Ghost Trick, I hadn't even personally linked the site elsewhere, aside from my twitter and to a few friends in passing.  And while I imagine the 'goal' is to have, again, a lot of people reading what I've written, the more important part is that I can sit back and say that I have written, that I actually have 198 other posts before this one.

Before this blog, probably my biggest achievement in writing was actually letting go of all my reservations about writing a story and writing up 33 pages of one during a blackout last Summer.  We'd lost power because a windstorm knocked a tree on top of the power lines and it took a week for the county to send anyone out to take care of it so that the electric company could come out and get us up and running again.  My portable systems had long since run out of charge, and with no TV, no music or anything else to do, I read and I played solitaire.  And as I played solitaire, I kept thinking about how I wanted to write something, how I wanted to actually construct a story long enough for a book.  And when inspiration struck, I didn't bother with doubts, I just wrote.  I read every page over and over again whenever I didn't know precisely where to go next to keep myself immersed in the world I was making and managed to keep going on.

I still have it of course.  I hate to say that it's only up to, likely 40 or 50 pages (hand-written, of course, so much less typed) now, and that I've actually gotten myself stuck, since I'm not sure if I like the mood of it anymore, and I don't know what to put between the start and finish (which is really my big problem with writing something long; I know where I want it to end, and I can't help but think anything I put in between is just going to be filer), but I still have it, and I'm still more or less proud of it.  I hope to actually finish it someday and like to think I will.  But we'll see.

Anyways, I think the point in all this was that I really just wanted to sit down and type out how happy I am with what I've done so far and how it's really pushing me on to keep doing it.  I've said it time and time before, but thankfully, somehow, I've never felt negatively about doing this.  It's never been a 'job', it's never felt like a chore, and I think that's a good sign.  I'm not sure if this is really the 'perfect' capper to the week that I've put out this week, but I'm happy to type this out, and I hope it matches quality for anyone reading.