Just keep showing up.
I’ll admit it. I was very tempted to skip this week’s post. And here’s why.
Recently, my life was injected with a small (and much-needed) dose of extra activity. And so, at the end of most days, I’ve collapsed into an exhausted puddle, curled up with hot chamomile tea and - unnervingly - no real desire to write, to edit, to promote, to turn the cogs that keep this blog running.
And so, I toyed with the idea of giving this post a miss, of ignoring my self-imposed deadlines, my (seemingly) arbitrary schedule - a schedule that promises you, reader, a steady stream of fresh blog posts.
Negotiating yourself out of creating is an easy task. When you have a small audience, it’s easy to wonder if anyone will really mind if you skip a blog post, to feed yourself myths of the ‘what’s the point?’ variety - the ones that lead you to alternative pursuits that promise instant gratification and, supposedly, satisfaction.
And the truth is, you probably won’t mind if my blog post doesn’t turn up in your inbox one particular week. But it can’t be about that. What it should be about, is honouring the promise I made to myself.
The promise to just keep showing up - no matter what.
If you find me at odds with a consistency crisis, it’s often because I’ve fallen victim to what I like to call the ‘perfect conditions’ fallacy - the idea that perfect conditions must exist before I can start creating:
‘I haven’t had the time, energy, or inspiration to make this the best it could be. It’s not perfect and, therefore, it’s not yet fit for public consumption.’
Even after half a year of blogging, my perfectionist tendencies wrestle to claim victory over my need to ship blog posts on time. With a full-time job and a temperamental plethora of personal commitments, how can I ensure the writing I publish here is of the highest possible quality, every single time?
The truth is, I can’t.
My work will not - and cannot - reach the heights of perfection. But that shouldn’t matter. I’ve slowly learnt to accept that, sometimes, a post that I’ve had wild dreams for will refuse to live up to said dreams, will refuse to turn out as envisaged. But I’ll still publish it.
Why? Because, while you will (hopefully) overlook the imperfections that stubbornly sprinkle themselves across my work and, instead, simply enjoy the content for what it is, you will notice when you visit the blog and find that my ‘latest’ piece is three months old.
And so, when you’re presented with the most binary of decisions - to publish an imperfect piece, or to publish nothing at all - I hope you’ll realise that if you’re in this for the long-haul, there is only one acceptable choice.
So, promise yourself to just keep showing up.
Perhaps perfectionism isn’t your Achilles heel, though. Perhaps you are favouring progress over perfection and publishing your work consistently.
However, perhaps that post you painstakingly created, refined, and (bravely) released into the world was met with stark radio silence. And then, perhaps an uninvited - but inevitable - thought quietly edges its way in to your mind:
‘Is anyone reading this thing, anyway? Is all this work in vain? Is it simply a futile exercise in justifying a (supposed) sunk cost?’
No, it isn’t. The public pursuit of a passion project will be anything but futile.
When you’re first starting out on your creative journey, you will have a tiny audience. And with a tiny audience, comes a tiny response - at first.
There have been many occasions on which only a handful of subscribers have opened my newsletter (and yes, that link is a shameless - or seamless? - attempt to increase that number), or a blog post I poured great thought and vulnerability into is met with little to no response.
But I don’t (and won’t) let this deter me. And I know it is far, far, too early to give up right now. I know it takes months - often years - to bring in a following, to construct a community around what you’re creating.
In a world saturated with quick wins, it’s increasingly common to feel disheartened, to give up on a particular project when it’s not yielding any instant - and therefore ‘real’ - results. What we tend to forget, however, is that if you’re undertaking a significant project, significant results will take time to materialise.
In the meantime, celebrate the smaller (but no less meaningful) results. My self-imposed blogging deadlines have gifted me a space in which to continuously hone my writing skills, my process, and to stretch my creativity beyond its supposed limits. (If we read the blog’s first post, I hope we can agree that my work has improved - if only slightly - since then.)
Committing to consistency has also gifted me opportunities that would have never found their way to me, had I chosen to prematurely abandon the blog after its first few, quietly received, posts.
And, of course, the power of consistency is passion project-agnostic. My favourite example of its power? Marques Brownlee. Now one of the world’s largest technology YouTubers, Brownlee began his journey as a young teenager, filming and uploading videos at home for a very small audience.
But Brownlee didn’t let low view counts distract him. He just kept going - incrementally improving his craft, gradually growing his subscriber list, and remaining admiringly consistent over the years. He never gave up.
Now, eleven years later, Marques Brownlee has twelve million subscribers.
Often, the key to success is to just keep moving forward. Pursue that passion project for the love of it, for the opportunity to continuously hone your craft. Just keep plugging away, even if you are (initially) met with a lukewarm response.
If you commit to consistent, focussed, work over a sustained period of time, the results will reveal themselves - every single time. Remember, most ‘overnight’ successes are the result of years of long, gruelling, hard work.
With that in mind, I’m going to just keep showing up. I hope you will too.
Until next time,
S
Cover image captured by Rod Long for Unsplash.
