I’ve written a few times about the purpose of this daily blog (as recently as yesterday, in fact) and yet I still fall into the trap regularly of sitting down and wondering “what I have to say.” I’ll sit there, sometimes for minutes, wondering what a “good enough” post might look like.
I was flicking through Kevin Kelly’s Excellent Advice for Living whilst sat on the couch this evening, enjoying decades of wit and wisdom reduced to Tweet-length nuggets. It reminded me why I started writing in the first place: to capture small bits of life before they’re lost.
I was reading Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird when I started posting, and she was writing about how—earlier on in her journey—she’d capture little vignettes whilst in the coffee shop on her lunch break. Kelly’s capturing nuggets of wisdom he’s gained over a lifetime. O’Hara captured life during his lunch breaks in Lunch Poems. On and on and on.
Some of my favorite pieces throughout this blog aren’t actually seeds that I see growing into something bigger. They’re just pieces of life, with nowhere specific to go. Maybe they’ll one day combine into something, and maybe they won’t. Maybe they’re just fine as they are.
My second post ever was something overheard on a dog walk. Perhaps my favorite post yet is just 12 words long. I’ve got one-paragraph memories of my grandfather, short notes on the power of walks, and others on what home means to me. It’s these pieces that make me smile, and I intend (and often fail) to write primarily for myself.
I’m going to get back to some more of this. That doesn’t mean I won’t write pieces for others, or that I’ll never write longer pieces. It just means that this blog—this daily blog—is going to focus on the little things that might add up (or not). It’s going to be the place where a “good idea” isn’t necessary. Where a sentence is enough; more than enough.