This Is My Writing Class

I mentioned that I got into a car accident the day before Haloween of 2018. I totaled my car, tore something in my shoulder, and got a pretty good/bad/bummer of a concussion. One of the things that I started doing about two months into my recovery was waking up before my sons every day. What this allowed me to do was wake up intentionally and in control. I also started journaling every morning to try to get the jumbled mess of thoughts in my head flowing and capture some of the “disorganization” captured onto the paper. As of this date, I am 74-days consistent with this new habit.

What I have noticed is that I really enjoy writing. I enjoy crafting a narrative and telling a story. This makes sense because I love doing this in person, the only difference I can’t talk with my hands through the screen. As I was just journaling, I thought to myself, “I don’t know anything about writing. I should take a writing class.”

I started to then think about podcasts I had listened to with Tim Ferriss and how he had learned so much from a professor and author John Mcphee. My mind started trying to recall all of the books, videos, podcasts, and resources that I should look up to learning something and become a better writer.

Then, the new part of my brain spoke up. The Year29 part of my brain chimed in. I realized that no, I shouldn’t take a writing class. This website is my writing class.

How do you become a better writer? You write more. How do you learn to shoot a better jump shot? You shoot a ton of jump shots.

I understand that this can reinforce bad habits, but this entire Year29 experiment is built off the foundation of a new good habit. And this is my website, so I make the rules.

Anyway, the most important thing that I can do here is to find my own voice. I enjoy writing in a narrative style. I like how it feels and how it flows and comes across. I probably use too much punctuation and commas, and I can’t remember all of the English rules I learned in high school. This is just fine. This is another reason why zero-inputs and Year29 are so important. I don’t want to sound, look, or think like you. I want to sound, look, and think like me. The more that I take in from other sources, the harder that it becomes to establish who I am and what it looks like to be me.

Our daily lives are consumed by so many outside influences trying to tell us who we should be, sometimes it takes tuning out all of the noise to remember who we are.