For a while now, I've felt an obligation to write in a certain manner. For blog posts, I felt like they needed to teach something and if they didn't, there was no point in writing them. If there was no big revelation at the end, there was no point.
For instance, I started writing 3-4 articles in the past month but deleted all of them because by the time I got to the end, I realized that the reader might not enjoy reading it. It's not as impactful as I would have hoped.
This type of thinking makes me feel constrained but it extends past opinion blog posts. I write tutorials and articles on tech on my other blog but again, unless it's something that will "last through the ages", I don't bother with it. And if it takes too long and is too in-depth, I just don't have the time for it and move on. For instance, I've learned a lot about some new tech in the past couple of months and wanted to write about it because it was stuff that people don't talk about but it takes too much work.
I'm already at a point in this particular post where I don't want to write anymore. I'm getting bogged down with boilerplate and in the end, will I have a point? No one knows.
I also write stories and books and edit a ton. Unless I already fit a series, I usually don't write new stories. I mean, I have so many running so why should I start another one? Or why should I write a one-off if it could be perfectly modified to fit one of my series? Books are the same thing, I feel obligated to edit them and so I do but at the expense of writing something new. Don't get me wrong, I love editing and I love to see how that turd of a book gets polished into something I'll eventually release and re-read a few years later anew.
There is this certain expectation I have of my writing. And it keeps me from being free to explore stuff or just write shorter articles or just write useless stuff! Why don't I?
There's this inherent want to keep things productive. If it's not productive, it's useless (and we all know that's false) but that's how it feels whenever I want to go off tracks. Even my technical posts get that way because I keep thinking that I should be editing my technical book instead of writing new content!
It's ridiculous!
And so, this will be hopefully one of many quick rants and quick stories and quick articles that do not align perfectly or may not make a point or may not make a reader think beyond what is in front of them.