First of all, I should say, it’s not like I didn’t think about writing another WSPR in these last 9 months. I did think about it, many times, but my progress with writing had been so piecemeal and sporadic throughout 2020 that I was never sufficiently motivated to update this wlog.
And that falls on me: motivation isn’t something you just get, it’s something you make and maintain. To a certain degree I can blame the pandemic for my unproductive year. But it’s also been true that there was nothing essentially stopping me from writing, it being a personal, simple, stay-at-home activity.
I’ve struggled with productivity for many years now, and have set myself a sort of Grail Quest to find a solution to my productivity woes. In fact, I made a whole podcast in 2020 about starting that search called The Skyward Spiral. And while I’ve made progress through introspection and analysis, looking at how I work and trying to find ways to work more, and harder, and more efficiently, ultimately it’s a nut I haven’t yet cracked. I always find myself falling off the working wagon, for days or even weeks at a time. And as anyone who falls off a wagon can tell you, when you pick up the pieces again, you’re not back where you started, but quite some way behind.
Right now, there’s no real audience for anything I make, and I take advantage of that somewhat. There are no eyes on me, no expectations for my work, no exterior timescales or deadlines. To some extent I am resting and relaxing in obscurity. Obscurity is comfortable, and easy: it demands nothing. Of course, that’s not what I want for myself, ultimately. I don’t want or need to be a household name, but I want my work to be read and appreciated, and for my readers to want and expect more. A worry of mine is that this is a relationship I’m not quite ready to fulfil.
2020 was a year full of frustration, with the state of the world, but more than that with the state of myself. As of writing this I’m one month into 2021, and have finally managed to raise my productivity game a bit, pushing myself to write every day, at least a little. And, slowly, I believe it is working. With enough elbow grease and oil, the rusted gear moves. But I am still nowhere near the kind of pace and efficiency I would like to be creatively. Time will tell if my grail lies within reach.
When I decided to start this wlog, my idea was not that people would care to read it straight away, but rather, that once my various writing projects have met with any success, these reports would work as a kind of time capsule for where I was before, and how I got to where I went. I feel I have gained a lot from other authors and creatives describing their process and journey, so I wanted to do the same. Well, I shall try and start this up again, as a semi-frequent thing. Long story short: 2020 knocked the wind out of my sails, but in 2021 my ship is sailing once again.
I don’t want to write too many of these indulgent, introspective posts. Next time I’ll talk about the writing, and try and stay on topic.
so long for now
David Whitechapel 