One of the maddening things about Mac/Apple blogs, if not the entire tech space, is the time spent writing about what tools you use for work. At a certain point it completely overshadows what work gets done.

Though pen and stationary collectors have the same battle. We’re all writing about the things that we like, but how much of our time is devoted to discovering how we do things rather than what we do with them?

That’s the old joke innit? Writers spend more time piling up expensive notebooks that sit there too fancy for whatever silly thing they have kicking around their heads.

What is the impulse that sends up chasing down new and shiny ways to do our work, even as we frustrate ourselves not doing any actual work?

I assume I’m projecting a bit of my own angst here. If you’re twenty you probably have whatever notebook and computer you can afford and are pouring out work. Me? I’m trying to shamble together the right kind of caffeine high just to hammer out these essays once a week.

Of course, if I went down to the basement and dug up my old notebooks covered in collages and filled to the brim, I’ll realize that my Dunning-Kruger had just gotten the best of me. Every idiot idea I had was golden, and I was willing to commit it to posterity. Most of it that haven’t stuck around in the back of my head as an eventual grown-up project deserves its mildewy fate.

Now I’m cautious in parsing out an idea to the point that even I am not that interested in it. Whatever survives the self-doubt gauntlet gets to egotistical corner and can walk its way safely to the dozen or so of you that keep up with this site.

The last year since I stopped trying to freelance has stirred some genuine original thoughts. One of which became a novel this November, along with a few sketches in my notebooks of something interesting I’m not quite ready to share.

I still lean on NaNoWriMo as evidence that I can push myself to simply write when I want to. Though I am still to self-conscious to it to open the Scrivener file and even look at the mess I made. It was made to simply get to the end of something. Now I’m searching for the right beginning.