I haven’t published any articles in two weeks.

That is the first break I have had in a year, which makes it even more significant.
My initial idea was to write constantly, week in, week out, to keep my promise to myself. I had a list of over 70 topics I'd collected over the years that I wanted to address.

The first few months, choosing a topic was easy because the pool was big. The biggest lesson, since I hadn’t seen this coming, was that writing became a kind of solo therapy session. It forced me to focus on one thing, clarify my thoughts and opinions, and turn them into writing. At first, it was challenging because I wanted to cram all my views into a single article.

Once I figured out one article per idea, it became much easier. The pool was still deep enough to fish out topics worthy of publishing.

I was never keen on following and reading other people’s writing. I wanted to reach my own conclusions, not be influenced by others. But I kept reading books, centuries-old material, looking for someone who verbalized how I feel and think about life

Today we still have the same worries and joys as did people back in ancient Rome. The core, basic thought, the reptilian brain, hasn’t changed much, if at all.

I kept finding bits and pieces in different philosophies and religions which resonated with me deeply, yet other parts were so repulsive I could not accept them as mine. So I would write about the things I found interesting and close to my mind and heart.

The next “phase,” if you can call it that, was feeling good about it, like I had something to say. A lot, actually, so I started to explore how to get in front of as many eyes as possible. At one point, I started posting short thoughts and insights on two social networks, commenting on other people’s work to draw attention to my writing.

And it worked. My numbers grew fast. The effort was paying off. The thought of making a living from it started to appear in the back of my mind.

I kept writing my weekly newsletter, unwilling to change what worked for me and my thought-clearing process, but I tried to game the short format. I created my own tracker to see what performed best and drew the most eyes, and in doing so, I realized it was a path to the same destination I’d decided I didn’t want.

Once you chase results, you start optimizing your content to what performs best. That, per se, didn't turn me off. The deal-breaker was what I kept seeing in other people in the same game. Repetition, recycling, and rewriting the same idea over and over.

From my point of view, even if what’s being sold is true (doing the same thing repeatedly brings results), it’s not my cup of tea. Nothing wrong with it, just me no like.

So I dumped the idea of becoming a new internet sensation and kept writing weekly, never missing a week. Sometimes I was so productive that I wrote two articles in one sitting.

Everything was peachy, even though the pool was almost dry, but new ideas and experiences kept flooding in, until they didn’t. And that is how we got to this two-week silence.

What happened, you might ask?

I accepted a project that really intrigued me. It sits at the crossroads of what I have been looking for.
It’s early enough that I have real impact on how it grows, it has huge potential, the team shares the same values, and it benefits the users. I’ve passed on many projects as they lacked one or more of these prerequisites.

And it’s not like I didn’t write during these two weeks. I did. But the material wasn’t the quality I want to put in front of my audience. It still sits in draft, and maybe one day, when I have more time to think it through, I’ll publish it.

It bothered me that I can’t find time to make them worthy, and I tried a few times to polish them, but it didn’t happen. And, as always, the answer came when I least expected it.

One morning at 5:40, I woke up and kept lying in bed. Over the next hour, I realized the problem wasn’t the writing time I lacked. It was time for thinking.

Writing is easy once you know what you're going to write about. If you try to make it up as you go, it’s gonna turn into some theoretical bullshit no one will get. The funny part is I learned that in high school, yet it took me 30 years of life experience and a year of writing to remember it.