no more measuring by percentages
quick update: on accountability, giving up, identity, and self-love
It’s been roughly half a year since I started “Just 1%”, a newsletter in which I wanted to relearn accountability, to focus on writing for myself, and create something every week for the sake of “trying to be consistent”.
I managed to keep it up for a month, maybe two, but eventually once again, life got in the way and I began to find it difficult to stay motivated.
And as each week passed that I missed my deadline for this, the less that writing this newsletter became important to me. The original goal that I had set out to achieve: “Write every week, even if it’s just 1% of effort”, slowly became a burden that I had originally intended to shelf.
1% had grown into 2%, 3%, 4%, 5%. The weeks turned into months and every single time, opening Substack or something to write on became, even more, a difficult burden that I had to make an active decision to do.
So I gave up.
What was supposed to make me happy, to give me an outlet to write all these things in my head, turned into a long-form commitment I no longer wanted to take part in.
I think about this in the context of love and marriages, and a possible long-term relationship that sprouts from the decision to get married. I wish there was an easier answer to being able to sustain a marriage other than “deal with it, it is what it is, you have to make it work”. I wish that I knew, for sure, if it was possible to remain completely and whole-heartedly in love with someone or something for the longest time, to remain committed as a result of that.
Unfortunately, I never really had any sustained marriages or relationships in my life that I can base this on a reference point of.
Possibly the only thing that has held true and consistent for the majority of my life has been my love for dance. Growing up as a B-boy, Hip Hip has been a part of my identity since I was 13, making it 10 years since I was introduced to dance.
Yet my relationship with dance has always been rocky. There were points of time where I felt like I didn’t deserve to be in the place I was in because I wasn’t good enough as a dancer. There were high points as well, where all I could think about was dance, and improving, and if I could hit this move, or training. Through all that, in the highs and lows, the fact that I was a dancer remained, whether I was good or bad. If there was music, I would move. Isn’t that just the simplest point of dance? To move?
I think about identity a lot in the context of dance. Often feeling like my dance is not my own, and generally just uncomfortable with my movement and my embodiment of my body. It makes me feel inauthentic, as though my body was a separate part of my mind and there was a tiny me in my head controlling this robot that was my body according to some waves in the air that my ears could measure.
I hold the same kind of feelings for writing, and in general, any kind of work I try to output. The question of “who am I?” brings out so much self-doubt, that I land in this loop.
I once tweeted this page from my Roam, in which I was contemplating what is self-love, and what it means to love myself.
To which my friend Bardia replied,
A religious writer asked for a word of wisdom.
Said the Master, “Some people write to make a living; otbhers to share their insights or raise questions that will haunt their readers; others yet to understand their very souls.
“None of these will last. That distinction belongs to those who write only because if they did not they would burst.”
As an afterthought he added, “these writers give expression to the divine — no matter what they write about.”
In dancing, in writing, and in love. All I know is that I do.
So… to the question of where this newsletter is going and where my identity is going.
I don’t really know.
I just decided that I no longer want to create reservoirs for my writing, to pool it up and force it out when I don’t want to.
I want to write the way that I dance when I hear music when I catch a vibe.
So I think I’ll just write when I feel like it.
I’ve grown tired of having to validate who I am through the work I make.
I don’t really know who I am yet.
And I don’t really mind that I don’t know who I am.
But I hope that you come along with me as I figure that out.
Related Links:
Productivity for Special Snowflakes (Tiago Forte)
Possibly a more “productivity” centered explanation to the way that I will continue writingTweet thread on loving yourself through capacity to love others
Which holds a similar sentiment to how I feel about this newsletterTweet thread on trusting yourself to be okay even if you feel guilty