Committing Myself to Commitments

For those of you that are unaware, I have indeed made my triumphant (?) return to the confines of the great City of New York, with the goals of tackling any and all creative endeavors I have ever dreamed of doing. Yet, as soon as I got here, I found myself swamped with extraneous bullshit that left with little time and less energy to take on any of these goals. After becoming extremely frustrated and depressed, with the help of some excellent friends I have arisen with a determination to not give a fuck about the superfluous shit that flows in and out of my life on a typical day and just get shit done. As part of this determination, I am committing myself to fulfilling my commitments. One of those being to post at least one blog entry every day.

Of course, this subject is pretty much a total cop-out. I had other ideas, but writing about my commitment to write seemed easiest, so I'm rolling with it. And while I'm sure in about four or five days, this commitment will become incredibly annoying, I'm trying to see the more positive aspects about it:

1. Getting to write long-winded, convoluted prose that is dense and not always easy to understand. I don't get to do this all that often because the fields I'm trying to break into shun this type of writing because it doesn't make money. The general idea, and I'm not always one to disagree, is that most people are stupid and/or ignorant and/or don't have enough time/patience to actually READ something. They just want to skim and get the general gist of an idea. I don't blame them. I don't even have a full-time job and I often find myself pressed for time. I also sleep a lot.

2. Honing my writing skills. Just like any other skill, the more you do it, the better you become. So, in theory, writing a post a day about something, anything really, will make me a better writer.

3. The challenge of coming up with a topic every day. As with the writing skills, generating ideas, especially good ones, is a skill that if worked on consistently, can become a real asset. It's not so much that you generate better ideas than you would have otherwise, it's that you generate those great ideas faster. Rather than having to knock out all of the stupid, bullshit ideas for an hour before something even half-way decent comes around, you can almost train your brain to bypass those idiotic ideas right away and skip to the good stuff. A major asset in advertising, joke-writing, really any creative writing.

4. Writing well enough and picking interesting topics might actually get people to read/follow my blog. Which would certainly build my social-networking cred. As much as I may think social media capabilities are given to much credence by employers these days, proving that I have some skill in attracting attention will help me get a job doing something a little more intellectually stimulating.

I'm moderately excited about staying committed to my commitments and following through on my goals. For those that know me, moderate excitement is a big step for me. And I've never been all that great at sticking with long-term, every-day kind-of-goals. So, this will be a challenge. But, I like challenges. And overcoming this challenge will be a huge benefit, no matter which way it breaks.

Hope to see you back here soon.