Destroying Inhibitive Precedences (Or Why I Haven’t Blogged Often)

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I have a confes­sion to make, and you’re my surro­gate priest in this confes­sion booth of a blog post. Any reader of this site knows, with antic­i­pating anguish I hope, that I don’t post that often. Is it a roaring social life, exhaus­tion from copious amounts of sultry rendezvouses, a dedi­ca­tion to my new book, or even a lack of disci­pline? Well, maybe those are all valid culprits, but real­is­ti­cally, the major cause is none of those… and it’s far from a lack of content or ideas.

The truth is, I don’t like writing.

Specifically, writing on this blog. I just don’t like the process.

What I DO like — no, love — is crafting a commu­ni­ca­tion of ideas. It’s not that I don’t like the art of writing itself, it’s simply that the joy of it tends to be sucked away here, like the blood of orig­i­nality out of the neck of a teenage vampire franchise.

The art of writing is wonderful in that it forces me, through the constraint of written words and known vernac­ular, to dive deep inside my mind and soul towards a place where I can conjure up an igni­tion of my creativity, so as to perfectly express a tidy little package of thought, emotion, and person­ality – all tied up within a bright red bow, waiting to be unwrapped. Just like that sentence; the one that made me grin as my finger bounced with smug voli­tion off of the period key.

I like speaking too; being able to get into that state of uncon­scious, passionate flow in which every word seems to be coming from a higher or deeper part of me. The ability to use my inflec­tions and direc­tion­al­ized language to evoke exactly what I wish upon my listener. That warm loving feeling of joy I got when my girl­friend wanted to just lay next to me and simply hear me talk about anything, for the sound of my voice alone was soothing, comforting, and slightly intox­i­cating. I brushed it aside as silly girli­ness at the time, but hind­sight shows me how truly magical those moments were for the both of us. My commu­ni­ca­tion wasn’t in the crafting of words, but in the simple emotions evoked.

I also enjoy creating art and music, and even more recently, move­ment — such as dancing, yoga, and body language in motion. The absence of words alto­gether is some­thing magical once you learn the new “language”. On the more esoteric level, commu­ni­cating via emotions, thought, and symbolism is a fasci­nating joy in itself.

I’m not a writer, blogger, tweeter, podcaster, video caster, etc – but rather some­body who enjoys commu­ni­cating and expres­sion through whichever medium and means I see fit for the given message. The labels I am finding are very, well, inhibitive.

What’s Inhibiting You From What You Want?

So what’s the reason I don’t like posting blogs? Is it the writing I despise? No, that’s just about all of what I enjoy. I know that may seem to counter what I just said in the begin­ning, but as I’ve been thinking about why I have so many great ideas and yet so little posts, I’ve discov­ered the biggest cause for the fric­tion – my inhib­i­tive precedences.

My prece­dences:

• I started by posting really long articles
• I started by being very detached
• I started by having a picture 560px wide at the top of every post
• I started by not talking about my day-to-day life
• I started by posting very sporadically
• I started by being a perfectionist

These are the prece­dences I’ve set up for myself, and being a man of consis­tency and congru­ency, I rigor­ously tried adhering to them.

In my mind I had this whole box set up of how my blog “should be”, rather then what I felt I wanted it to be, based on how I set it up. The thought of changing direc­tion 2 years into writing, and aban­doning all-so-many from my read­er­ship was just unthink­able… yet I thought about it everyday I wanted to write some­thing new.

Of course this is ridicu­lous, as I only get a few thou­sands visi­tors a month on average, less than 100 followers on Twitter, and roughly 160 fans on Facebook. Even if I were to lose all of them, the chances of gaining more readers that were all about my new approach, would likely be much higher in the long rung anyways. As I think about it now, the reasons were all just rubbish fears.

These prece­dences I’ve made for myself became the exact things that inhib­ited me from commu­ni­cating my message. I dreaded HAVING to find a rele­vant image for each post I made just because I’ve done it for all others. That was the worst, and even if posts with images get more hits, the amount of “lost” visits would have been made up in the tripling of arti­cles actu­ally written. I would spend hours of my time looking for a stupid “catchy” image, rather than focusing on providing you with value through my ideas. I know where I’d rather invest my time, and I think you’d agree.

The second most inhibiting prece­dence was that of writing long arti­cles. After posting 20 para­graph long posts, what the hell would people think by my posting only 3? Would they feel “ripped off”? Would I be able to get my point across in such short amount of space? This was really preventing me from commu­ni­cating a lot of really simple ideas, that I felt were too short for a post. Ironically, this article feels short in compar­ison to the rest, yet gets my point across.

The third was being detached and almost too acad­emic. While most of what I write is aimed towards helping you become a better man (irony strikes again, as a majority of my readers are actu­ally women), I felt selfish talking about myself when I “should” be focusing on you. This has resulted in neutered and some­what imper­sonal arti­cles, that could have used some of my person­ality and life expe­ri­ence. There’s no reason I can’t share a serious bit of wisdom I’ve learned while still making a personal connec­tion. You may have already noticed them getting more personal, as apparent in my post on turning 23.

By now I bet you’ve started to realize some of your own prece­dences that are inhibiting what you really want to do going forward. If not, then you sure are now. I think this is ulti­mately why most compa­nies fail in the advent of new ideas — rigid adher­ence to the old known ways, and fear of changing direc­tion of an entire empire that people are used to. While some­times these changes are horrible (a la Pizza Hut rebranding to The Hut), often times a change in focus is mirac­u­lous and can be the differ­ence between surviving and really thriving (a la Apple going into the cell­phone and music business).

Destroy, Destroy, Destroy!

So how do I plan on destroying my blog’s inhib­i­tive prece­dences? More so, how can I over­come my own mental blocks in order to share insights with others, without letting my ego get in the way anymore? Well, this post was my first step. In becoming honest and open with myself, and totally trans­parent with you, I take the leap into the pit of destruc­tion, burn my ships, and start to break my prece­dences by going against them when needed, or even on purpose.

Here’s how I’ll destroy ‘em:

• I’ll start posting really short articles
• I’ll start by being more trans­parent and vulnerable
• I’ll stop posting pictures in every post
• I’ll start incor­po­rating more of my life and expe­ri­ences for connection
• I’ll start posting more often, even if it’s not profound to me
• I’ll stop being so anal about the presentation

Will this work? Will I get more readers, followers, likes, or page views? Will my blog turn to absolute shit rubbish nonsense tiddly­winks in the course of a few weeks?

I really don’t know, nor do I care. What I do care about is that now that I’ve been open about my internal struggle, I’m free to do what­ever the fuck I want in order to provide value. And yes, he really did just say “fuck”. I can now, as I have actu­ally been able to all along, write when­ever I want without discour­aging constraints. It’s my damn blog, there’s no reason I shouldn’t. And neither should you. Your own limi­ta­tions are those in your head, and since you created them, you can destroy them and build better ones. Those who don’t appre­ciate or like it, weren’t meant to listen to the real you anyways.

Now, if you have prece­dences that work and are enjoy­able for you, a style the people are used to, and a reason for doing so – then keep at it! But if you feel like you’re in a need of a change or refresher, go for it. Businesses rebrand all the time, websites get redesigned, and features get added or removed from your favorite programs. The people that complain and whine when some­thing usually gets changed for the better, are the people that hate change, including in them­selves. If you’re a creator, I’m sure you’ve noticed the worst are the ones that complain about a FREE service or product. Call my crazy, but for some myste­rious reason, these folk tend to be not the happiest people out there.

Taking this to IRL, you have have inhibiting prece­dences all around you in the form of social classes or groups, reli­gious dogmas, soci­etal beliefs, and even your own habits that are so engrained, you’re not even aware of how they might be preventing you from getting what you want. See what prece­dences you’ve set up up for your­self — such labels as your career title, clothing style, sexual taboos, and diet — that are in need of destroying in order to be set free to exper­i­ment in your deepest, and possibly darkest, desires.

Life is an exper­i­ment, and knowing the stakes are much higher when you’re more successful, I think it’s a good idea to do most of the trial and error while it’s less notice­able. That being said, 2 years into a blog and I’m still doing it has to tell you some­thing — don’t be afraid of change no matter how far of a fall from where you’ve gotten. Embrace change and seek to expand your comfort zone; you’ll only grow. Since there’s no such thing as failure, only learning, I encourage you to break your prece­dences when they’re holding you back and fail as quickly and often as you can. Don’t let your past atti­tudes and actions dictate your futures ones. It takes courage indeed, but your life is far too impor­tant to let your story of origin fore­shadow your destiny.