A Writer's Notebook, Day One-Thousand-Three-Hundred-And-Thirty-Four

I got myself to work on that essay tonight.  I had a bit of difficulty with getting started, but I decided to just write through it, discussing my trouble getting into the topic and why I was hesitating, and it offered me a path forward.  I am certain that I'll need to revise that part of the piece, but it helped me to push through some of the anxiety and get to work.  I know the piece is not perfect, and I would like to make it a bit longer, to take a deeper dive, but what is more important, right in this moment, is that I pushed myself to do that work and didn't back off of it.  I committed to getting to it and followed through.  I need to do that on a regular basis, the way I have committed to my daily poetry routine.  I am thinking that I should do the same thing again tomorrow.  Maybe, at some point soon, I will decide I don't need to do it every single day, but I know that can be a transformative commitment, so I am going to push myself in that direction right now, even though, if I am honest, I feel very nervous and hesitant about it.  I know I can do it, though, and I know that writing more will help me to get better.  It might be that this makes me a bit nervous right now, but I am sure I felt the same way when I first started making myself write poetry daily.  I know it will transform quickly into something else, if I can maintain the commitment for long enough.

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