When I joined Odyssey, I felt rejuvenated and excited. I began writing every day out of sheer anticipation. I finally had the chance to write for an audience wider than the kids looking over my shoulder in the library. I had never felt more confident.
If only this was true.
Immediately after joining Odyssey, I found myself kneeling over the toilet ready to vomit. My OCD thought a mental trip through every conceivable failure was the only appropriate celebration for the week. I began avoiding my computer as though it promised to bite off my fingers. When I eventually sat down to write, I stopped every few minutes from my welling apprehension. I had to find a better plan of action.
Whenever someone talks about “achievable goals,” they always refer to the same set of principles.
Make it specific.
Make it doable.
Make it daily.
I began writing with this in mind. I set a goal to write at least 100 words each day. They didn’t have to be 100 good words. They didn’t have to be 100 words that anyone would ever read. They merely had to be 100 words. I found this was already harder than I had imagined. The first days I began writing felt like pushing concrete out of a toothpaste tube. Impossible, frustrating, and my hands hurt a lot. However, despite my hands, I wrote 100 words. Not 100 good words, or words that anyone else would read, just 100 words. It turns out that none of them really were all that good.
After the first few articles lay at my feet like wriggling, defeated beasts, I sat for a moment to reflect. My writing felt stiff and inexperienced. The prose constantly waxed between being too cumbersome and too simplistic. My article was finished, yet I felt largely unfulfilled. This feeling still hasn’t changed. There was no moment of clarity when I realized the genuine greatness of my writing. The clouds didn’t part. The week went on as usual.
However, I realized something was not quite usual. I continued writing 100 words a day, sometimes spiraling into twice or three times that amount. For the first time in my life I was writing every day, multiple times, and even managing to enjoy it. What I wrote still felt lackluster, but I was finally writing consistently, focused on growth and improvement rather than perfection.
This process is no different today. Even this simple cocktail of 500 words feels like coaxing elephants through a circus hoop. I push on anyway. Not because it is enjoyable, or easy, or relaxing, although it isn’t always the opposite either. I write 100 words hoping that it will become second nature rather than a monthly reprieve. I write 100 words hoping I might improve along the way. Meanwhile, when my efforts come out like concrete toothpaste, I will put down my hundred words and prepare myself for tomorrow. I won’t always put down 100 good words. I won’t always put down 100 words worth reading. That’s ok, my goal was simply 100 words.
