Editor's note: This was originally sent out in the newsletter on 09/24/18

This week has been more of a struggle for me than it should have been. Obviously, this newsletter is much later than usual.  Even now as I am working on it, my mind keeps wandering to other things, almost looking for reasons to stop working on it. This is different from how I usually do this. I have always been a horrible procrastinator, but I would always still hit my deadlines. And often, when I get going, I can get through it fast. While I don’t sit down and write until the night before it needs to be done, I will have been working on what I want to say all week in my head, forming the structure and bullet points I want to hit, so when I sit down, it usually spills out pretty fast.

The next question might be if the problem is I don’t have anything to say this week. I know that isn’t the case though, I have an ongoing list of quite a few different topics that I will get to at some point. Many of them I already have given a lot of thought to already and would have worked just fine this week as well. Maybe I wasn’t feeling any of them at the time I tried to write, but that doesn’t seem like the answer either.

I typically write at night, usually much later than I should be up, to begin with. When I try and see what was holding me back this week, I still don’t think I have answers that make sense. The first night I spent dealing with something else, that in the end won't even matter, the second night I actually just went to bed instead, and the third night I actively avoided doing it and spent the night cleaning random things in the house. At some point, I literally just sat in front of my computer with the blank page open and just stared at it for thirty minutes. It felt like (and in a way still does) my brain was only on strike for this specific task.

The weird part of it is, this isn’t something I have to do, I want to do it. I like the act of writing. I guess I have put this constraint on myself, but that was intentional, to push myself to do it more, to get better. It makes the pushback feel strange. The mind is something that will always fascinate me; why we choose what tasks feel harder at certain times is just weird.  I know that part of it is just like exercise, the more I do it, the easier it gets, but still, sometimes it can just feel like I’m not the one in control. Part of it might be willpower, but that is something that always seems odd to me as well. Why I can’t will myself to just sit and write, or why I still choose to eat something I shouldn’t even though I am actively telling myself not to, and other times I can just stop doing something and break a habit I have had for 20 years and never look back. The brain is a weird place.

Writing about how I haven’t been writing almost feels like cheating, but when I started with this whole thing, part of the point was to be open about things I was feeling or thinking. Also, in setting out to do it every week, I knew (and said) there would be weeks that were weird. In the end, there will always be next week (as long as my brain cooperates).

Links

• I love finding out where words come from, this video from Vox shows why we say "OK," always the politics.
• This one is a little nerdier, but over on Macstories, Federico has his annual iOS review up. As usual, it is very good, but very long. If you are interested in learning more, you can just pick out the topics you like.

This week was a little more of a how-the-sausage-was-made kind of post, but that's part of the fun right?

Thanks for reading,
Mike

P.S. This is still going to count as last week, so you should have another later this week for this week...