I was very passionate about–and consistent in– posting blogs from January to October 2019. I posted 41 blogs in 41 weeks.
Then, I didn’t post anything for two months – partly because I was so interested in my job that I was working most weekends; partly because I didn’t have any good ideas to write about.
But suddenly, today, I wrote three.
That got me thinking. Where do ideas come from? How does one fall in and out of passion or habit?
This blog is about my investigation of these questions 🙂
Every habit has its own rhythm. If your life get into a new rhythm, it will be hard for the habit to follow along.
Here is my understanding of the rhythm of writing:
- It is very slow. One. Word. At. A. Time.
- No matter how fast you type, you write one word at a time.
- You write; re-write; write; re-write.
- Sometimes your thoughts are as smooth as silk. Sometimes they are chaos and battles.
- Sometimes you read what you wrote and think – wow did I just write that? That is quite something! And other times you think – urr I am sick of myself!
- Sometimes you feel that writing is the purpose of your life. Other times you feel like it does not mean anything to anyone, and you wonder why you are doing this any ways.
- It is like holidays: It will never be the same as you expect it to be. Everybody else see the glorious side of it and only you see all the rest.
- It is very slow. One. Word. At. A. Time. — waited, you repeated yourself.
Yes.
It is very slow. One. Word. At. A. Time. That’s what I found to be the number one reason why I fell out of the habit of blogging.
In October, I became obsessed with data science. I was learning Python libraries, new models, visualizations, every weekend. However, coding has a very different rhythm than writing.
Here is my understanding of the rhythm of coding:
- fail fail fail f**k fail fail fail succeed!
You try one thing that is supposed to work … it doesn’t … you try another way … nope … you keep googling and trying … not happening … you quietly or not-quietly say some curse words … you calm down and look closer … you get another coffee and try again … bam!
The rhythm of coding is everything or nothing. Your code doesn’t do anything (for a long time) until it does everything (very quickly).
It’s not that these two habits cannot co-exist. They can. Many engineers / data scientists are great writers. Their writing could benefit from the logic of their engineering thinking. But it’s important to section out and set the right mindset for different tasks.
The joy from creating comes at a different pace as the joy from consuming.
Let’s say, you had a great Christmas break. During the days, you go to some amazing restaurants or ice cream shops, go to shop at a mall where everything is on sale, and every corner is decorated with lights and balloons. At nights, you go to see the biggest hit movie of the year, you have ten different dishes, maybe twenty, cooked by your families and friends at a potluck. During the in-between times, you scan through all your social media accounts, YouTube, Netflix, you keep scrolling and scrolling.
The joy of consuming comes at this pace: Hit hit hit hit hit. Every two seconds.
Why do you find it hard to get back to your habit of creating after holidays? Because you get used to the pace of dopamine hit every two seconds!
The joy of creating comes at a very different pace. The joy is in the journey. The joy is in the ups and downs, in the childlike curiosity, in the pursuit of something that is meaningful to you, in the look forward and look back, in sharing the great and hard moments with your co-creators.
The joy of creating is much more complex than the joy of consuming.
If you are trying to get back to your habit of creating, set your mindset to a more complex pace of reward.
So, to summarize my humble, probably non-original finding: If you are feeling falling out of passion, one possible reason is that you fell out of rhythm and pace.
Try familiarize yourself with the rhythm of work. Try reset your expectation of the pace of reward. That could be the fix.
Thank you for reading! I hope you have a fulfilling life.
If this blog interests you, here is the Table of Contents of the rest of blogs in my #52WeeksOfWriting challenge.
Gloria's Blog 
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