There Will Always Be A Reason To Not Write

bycaljones6750

329 followers

5 years ago

I finally figured out a way to assuage the guilt of not producing content for my website: produce content for my website.

I relocated from Atlanta back home to St. Louis on July 4th. I immediately got a part-time job to help sustain me until my website takes off. I have used the move and the job to justify being stagnant for nearly two months. What I have found out is not writing is more stressful than writing. I also discovered that procrastination feeds on itself. The longer you do nothing, the harder it is to do something.

One consequence of my inactivity that I did not expect is that I lost my sense of being self-employed. I no longer felt like my own boss. My computer actually intimidated me! I was checking my Google Analytics account and reading e-mails, but I did not write a single word for well over a month. I used the move and the job as reasons (translation: excuses) to set aside my commitment to grow my business.

What does good excuses and bad excuses have in common? Good excuses produce the very same results as bad excuses: nothing gets done. I told myself a thousand times that I would finish the post I was working on "tomorrow." But each tomorrow birthed another excuse.

It was actually a Feedback comment that relit my pilot light. The commenter wrote that she had read all of my posts and was looking forward to the next one. As I perused the comments, I noticed one thing most of them had in common: people find my posts informative.

This got me back on track. When I began to see my website more as a business than a service, I lost my primary motivation. I can't say it any better than Kyle said it in Lesson 10 of Level 3: "The purpose of your site is to help and educate," and when I think about the visitors - and potential visitors - to my site, I get excited knowing that I have a vehicle to "help and educate."

So, I'm back in the saddle again, folks. No more excuses. Thanks to all of you whose progress reports and success stories made my period of stagnation extremely uncomfortable. It's great to feel like part of the family again.