a hierarchy of priorities

1. publish something, anything

2. publish something i want to talk about, even if it's poorly written

3. publish something i think is well-written, that i'm proud of

publishing every day has so many ups and downs. i find myself constantly questioning why i'm doing this, and reminding myself of my priorities, which are roughly what i've outlined above. 

i want to tackle so many things. it's not every day that i feel up to tackling the big things, and that can feel demoralizing. but those days are important too, and even on those days, i can follow through on my absolute priority, which is to simply publish something. the more i can make the publish button my best friend, the better. i don't want to be caught unprepared when i suddenly get inspired with something good. the less friction the better, even if it means some days i post utter nonsense. 

the more often i publish, the more often i can catch a thought as it flits across my consciousness, and capture it as imperfectly as i may. the impetus for choosing this topic today was a realization that if i don't write down these thoughts at all, then they could literally just be gone forever. whereas if i can even gesture at what i'm thinking, then later i can access it and expand upon it, edit it, disagree with it. but i can't do that if i never wrote it down at all. so that's my second priority: capture something i want to capture, even if it's bad. 

the more i do of both of those things, the more chance i give myself to write something i'm proud of. maybe it means i won't have to work so hard to pull something out of thin air, because i already have some stuff to work with. maybe it'll keep me in the groove of inhabiting this tinkering space, so i feel more at home when i want to work hard on a piece.