Most of my writing starts with a simple idea—an idea swirling around in my brain that wants to be put down on paper.
I had an idea for an article – but when I did a Google search on the potential title I found that there were already many, MANY, similar articles on the same concept.
I don’t usually pre-search my idea to see what’s out there, I just write what comes to mind and the article comes to fruition.
And yet today I searched. And wow – there’s so much out there!
My article was already written – by someone else. And better than I could write it!
Writing Mirrors Life
So what do you write about when other more experienced and better writers have already written about the same thing?
For a long time, I’ve chosen to write for one person. For myself.
AR has turned into a sort of public motivational journal. FOR ME.
And yet, I still struggle to decide what to write sometimes. What do I need to hear right now? Sometimes, I just don’t know.
What do I want to say right now? I don’t know.
Most of the time, there is too much to say and not enough time or space to get it down.
And yet I decide to do it anyway.
I often don’t know what I am going to write, but I forge ahead anyway….
And the truth is that, in my writing, and in my early retirement, I don’t fully know the direction I want to take things right now.
I don’t know where the path forward lies.
And the unknown makes it hard to do anything sometimes, let alone write.
But the uncertainty reminds me of a quote in one of my favorite books…Boyd Varty’s The Lion Tracker’s Guide to Life:
In the bush and in life, we don’t get trails fully laid out.
– Boyd Varty, The Lion Tracker’s Guide to Life
We get tremendous unknowns and, if we are lucky, first tracks.
Then next first tracks.
I don’t know where things are going with this blog or with my early retirement in general.
All that I do know, right here, right now, is the possible next step – the first tracks.
I decided in January that I would sell off my affiliate website.
And it is still a work in progress, because the business is seasonal and can’t be sold off until closer to summer.
But that is my next best step.
Addition by subtraction.
So that is what I must focus on. The first tracks.
And in my writing, well… I may not know what I want to write about sometimes, but I do know that I want to write.
And that is enough.
Follow the first tracks -> one step at a time.
I don’t know where I am going, but I know exactly how to get there.
– Boyd Varty, The Lion Tracker’s Guide to Life