Do you know this urge in the back of your head to start a project and it has been there for a very long time? Something you really wanna do and you think about it a lot? You know that? This burning fire inside you about a specific topic you could talk about for hours? Man it would be great to put this burning fire and passion into a project.
But you never start?
You always have something you need to do first, like work or studying or just something simple like bringing the trash out and reorganizing your kitchen for the 5th time this month.
Yeah that’s me. I wanted to start this blog for a very long time, but I always found something more important to do. I tried it once, a year ago, but the process of building a website…man it’s hard and i consider myself a perfectionist which doesn’t make the process easier. Let’s keep it short – I failed.
In August this year, so about two months ago, I finished my last uni exam and quit the horrible job I just started. I thought I had it. I had the dream job, ready to go all out during my summer break, finish with my degree in winter and then get a permanent position at this company. Turns out the company was horrible and after a lot of tears and conversations with friends and family I decided to quit, not ready for the hole I would fall in. No job, no money and no idea what to do next. Yes of course, finish my master degree but then? I have no idea what I wanna do professionally, I just know or i think I know, that there are more people in my situation. More people feeling overwhelmed by the possibilities the professional life nowadays offers.
Okay so I decided I would try again this „blog thing“. Not to earn money and to make it my full time job. But to share my thoughts, keep myself accountable with exploring and sharing my journey to get help from others and maybe at some point to help others.
So I started, bought a domain and downloaded wordpress. I thought I could put all my energy and time into this project and within a couple of weeks I would have a website and a couple of blog entries.
But let me tell you … this drove me down even further in my hole. I fell into a depression.
I can’t get out of bed in the morning even though I used to be a morning person,
i can’t motivate myself for anything, even though I used to thrive being productive and busy (i know … don’t be busy, be productive, but i was both and i loved every second of it)
I was just so angry and tired the whole time.
All this of course did not help with starting a blog. I did close to nothing for this blog, maybe i did an hour or two a day, and if i worked on it then without any focus watching greys anatomy or Reels and googling everything that pop into my head, like the weather in L.A. or how to build your own dining table.
Even just writing this first article… I scheduled my day today and so far so good, but when I saw the next task, writing this article, I started taking a quiz which dog fits best to me and which dog races are best for beginners – at least I know that a golden retriever would fit to me – yeahh, love that for me (seriously!)
But then something changed. I decided to just write like I would talk to my journal. When I journal I talk to my inner self (still have to name her). And now I have written more words than in the last two months combined and I haven’t even started with my outlined points yet.
I don’t wanna structure every blog post like I am talking to my inner self, but this is the start that I needed. And as I learned from James Clear in his Book Atomic Habits – consistency is key. Just write every day a little bit, even if it’s just one sentence (well with that tactic it would take me a very long time to write another article). So Maybe just write one page a day. Even if it’s not good in the beginning or you have to do it all over again the next day, just write.
The Mel Robbins 5 Second Rule, where you just count to five in your head and then you do the task you did not wanna do, did not work for me, even if I started writing, I got distracted so fast and decided after 5 minutes I would do something else.
So I think I wanna go with James Clear and his thoughts on consistency. I just need to figure out what I wanna write.
To be continued …
