six<\/em> words?!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\nTo say the least, he was salty. I told him of the conversation I had with the person but that didn\u2019t really help my cause.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The next day when I left to write again, he told me that I \u201cbetter do more than six words\u201d this time. Fair. I kept my word that day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So now began the little joke that I must do at least six words each day or else he\u2019ll be upset. It\u2019s a good little metric really, because six words is so miserably low that how could I not do that?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Now, here is where it gets funnier. I\u2019ve started to frequent a cafe each weekday and have ended up interacting a lot with some of the other regulars. One of them is named Haz.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Now Haz is a cool guy and during one of our conversations I told him my minimum was six words. He looked at me quizzically and I told him the story I just told you. He cracked up at it and loved it. Now, each time he sees me, he points at me and says: \u201cSix words?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And each time I smile and nod because he\u2019s right. I gotta do six words.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Each time he shows up at the cafe with someone new and he says the phrase, his friend will look at him with curiosity and he\u2019ll urge me to tell the story.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So now I have about four people who, on any given day, will see me and ask me if I\u2019ve done my six words. If I say I have, they usually ask how many more than six I\u2019ve done.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I think what makes this little (if you will) bit is that there really isn\u2019t anything about the content of what I\u2019m writing that comes into question. I\u2019m actually very happy about that. It really helps me because I don\u2019t want to tell people about the story I\u2019m writing in greater detail than a short little summary.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I mean, I barely know where I\u2019m going with the story, I just know that I\u2019m trying to finish it!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The other fun thing about the six words is that it means that, each time I say \u201cyes\u201d to the question, I\u2019ve actually accomplished my goal for that day of getting some words down.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
That concept of getting words onto the page has become so important to me because it means that I\u2019m back to doing the thing that I used to love as a kid.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
My mother told me that, way back when I was in eighth grade, my teacher told her that if she asks for a sentence, I gave a paragraph; a paragraph, a page; a page, an essay. I even wrote a fan fiction story that was 170,000+ words long.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
No, I won\u2019t drop the link to it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I lost that willingness to write for myself and freely after college. I\u2019ve been pulling my hair trying to get that back. I kept asking myself where at the joy gone? Why didn\u2019t I want to write again?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Surprise surprise, it came from me expecting so much from myself. It came from me demanding<\/em> perfection on the first try. No one gets it perfect on the first try yet I didn\u2019t apply that to myself.<\/p>\n\n\n\nStupid? Kinda. But it goes to show my mindset at the time. It was rigid and stubborn and refused to flex. After years of un-learning, I think I\u2019m on a better path.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Here is the best part though, this blog post is part of my six word quota for the day. As this comes to a close I\u2019m far above that word count.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And I loved every moment of it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Every weekday I try to do some writing. I made a promise to myself to \u201cjust write\u201d (as the idiom goes). I leave my place, go to a coffee shop or wine bar, then sit down and write. If it\u2019s after work, I\u2019ll usually do a small little journal entry to get into the groove … <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[21],"tags":[30,32,33,31,28],"class_list":["post-224","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-creativity","tag-creativity","tag-habit","tag-routine","tag-work-ethic","tag-writing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mudbrain.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/224","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mudbrain.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mudbrain.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mudbrain.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mudbrain.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=224"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mudbrain.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/224\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":225,"href":"https:\/\/mudbrain.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/224\/revisions\/225"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mudbrain.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=224"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mudbrain.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=224"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mudbrain.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=224"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}