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Behind the Scenes

If you’re subscribed to Brainthoughts via email, you probably received about 10 different emails tonight about new posts that looked very adolescent and angsty.

I am not, in fact, dissolving into a 15-year-old angst monster. I’ve been transferring the last of my old posts from one of my high school blogs today, and I initially forgot to set most of them to “Private”, so they showed up on the subscription feed. They should be properly hidden now, where no one but me can witness their cringeworthiness.

Sorry ’bout that, folks.

In other minor site news:

  • Instagram and Twitter sidebar widgets have been replaced with widgets that actually work
  • Disclaimers added to footer, because I’m a professional now and stuff
  • Category and tag pages now display descriptions for the category or tag, if it exists (see the Inkblots category or the Humanist Year tag)
  • A few new default category headers added
  • Cross-posted Writing for Joy, which I meant to do about 9 months ago but forgot
  • Two new pages are almost ready to launch: About Brainthoughts and Support Me
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Desert and tree

This post was originally shared on Medium.

Drafts (23).

On the rare occasions that I log into my blog, that number greets me from the dashboard. My Drafts folder is littered with nearly two dozen abandoned posts. Some are one round of polish away from publishing; “long multi-part thing about election, prolly too long idk” is a full 3,500 words. Others, like “writing long arguments = not caring,” exist only as note-to-self titles. There’s enough to post twice a month for the next year, if only I could motivate myself to write.

The cogs of my brain, it seems, have locked up. In August 2014, I challenged myself to a “Blogathon” and published 19 posts in 31 days; in the past year, I published two. Drafts (23) makes it clear that it’s not for lack of ideas. Something else must be jamming my motivation.

I’m not alone. Back in November, Alex Gabriel acknowledged his struggles with writer’s block and launched a daily writing challenge to pull himself out. In December, Miri started something similar. This month, it’s Greta. My blogging game is a league or two below these three, but their openness about their challenges with writer’s block nevertheless inspired me.

I have a basket full of lemons right now labeled “inability to publish.” In the interest of making lemonade, here’s what’s holding me back — good excuses and bad. Continue reading →