User blog:Taldin/The Passage of Time

For the past year I've been running an experiment ; I committed to updating an adventure-style blog post once a week, every week on a Friday. Most days, I at least got the basics in there, and some entries were very, very brief. It was an interesting experiement, and fifty two weeks later, I'm through a year of it.

It was kinda like a lighter version of the NaNoWriMo in a way; a commitment to write on a timetable, to not give up, and to make at least an effort to show up and do something once a week.

What I thought was going to be the hardest part, wasn't; I remembered to do it. I didn't have trouble coming up with content; I didn't hold myself to a minimum word count or doing it exactly on a Friday -- some of the entries finally got filled in on the following Tuesday, late in the game.

What I thought was going to be the easiest part, wasn't; documenting some sort of adventure masked in the mundane, a journey of sorts as a companion piece to working with the H.E.R.O. Guild. I can say all I want that it wasn't a failing in me, it was a failing in circumstance, in dealing with unforseen and drastic life changes in the past year that curtailed the amount of creative headspace I had available, but it's not the whole truth.

I let myself backslide. I let myself down. I stopped putting in the effort that I intended to, and did what I did as maintenance rather than motivation. The blues came to roost under my roof, and I couldn't find my rose-colored glasses.

But I made it through. Things are looking better; life is a lot less stressful than it got last winter, and so despite there being a record of what didn't happen, there's still proof that I made it through the journey, albeit a little worse for the wear overall.

It's a core idea of being here at Habitica; I want to be better. I want to do better. I want to improve, and to have better habits despite everything that tries to drag me down into complacency and obscurity. I want to be a better writer, and a better artist.

Year two has to be better, I always tell myself, because at some point you stop falling and failing and start succeeding through stubbornness and perseverance.

Taldin (talk) 01:17, August 26, 2017 (UTC)