I failed before I even started, as someone with grand ideas and plans. I lack discipline and follow-through—my life story is a failure to start in every aspect. I know why people don’t really offer me many opportunities; I am a true failure to finish. Why am I writing these words…. well. I had this grand plan, after almost 3 years of writer’s block, two sentences written to a document, and that is all I could produce. Around the blue moon of Sagittarius on May 31, 2026. My creativity just bloomed, and all these ideas rushed to my head. I wanted to return to writing poems and short stories. I took this as a sign that whatever was blocking me was being removed by all the planetary movement. I wrote; every chance I got, I wrote. If I couldn’t write, I recorded the voice note, using the transcription feature. I cleaned it up as best I could. By mid-July, I thought I had a slew of rants, essays, attempts at satire written. If you only knew how happy I would be. I got cocky!
Yes cocky! I decided this was the year I’d publish my essay. First, I was going to start a hip-hop and astrology blog. So much material was circulating: Cardi B and Latto falling out. Jay-Z returned to the stage at the Roots Picnic on May 30th—Megan and Klay relationship implosion. I thought about them and wanted to discuss them in detail. I had an essay dealing with the grief of losing loved ones, losing friends, and even losing myself. WordPress had these prompts that called to me, and I wrote several pieces. I took this as a sign from the universe. It was time to stop hiding and publish my work. I ran with it, started researching WordPress and Substack. At this time, I had research from seminars, conversations with writers, and current trends. I let my ego drive me to think I could use what I’d learned to further my own ambitions.
I kept writing and decided to do my own challenge: I would publish at least one rant every day for September. I started planning and overplanning. I found out there is a badge on WordPress to publish 30 days in a row. They have a Vampire badge for posting after a certain time at night. I wanted them, so I set up a plan.
- Publish all my finished work that was suitable (some rants and essays are not appropriate for this blog)
- Have published after midnight.
- Focus on the content.
- Updating the website makes it mediocre.
Anyway, on August 30th, I realized my plan would fail because of my hubris and my miscounting of finished essays. I have 10 essays ready to go; of the 10, only 4 have been edited. I got so caught up in the idea of publishing 30 essays that I stopped writing. Some of the essays are pure trash, like not coherent thoughts or premises. My writing may be helping me clear junk from my brain. I do have some mitigating circumstances. I found out that I will be moving to a new job in September. I have to close out all my projects, so in July and August, my attention and time have been split. I realized this magnificent plan in my head will not work.
Where I have to take responsibility, I didn’t properly label my essays, so some are lost to untitled documents. I didn’t edit the essays when I finished them. If I had taken an hour a day to edit, I would have had more ready to go. I got excited about writing again and didn’t pay attention to how many I’d written. Short version: my lack of discipline prevented what could have been a great challenge to get me published not just on my blog, but also in magazines and contests. I am glad this challenge, through failure, exposed an issue within myself. I get ahead of myself and don’t think through the logistics. I don’t make time for the details, leaving it up to chance, which led to only 10 essays written when I planned to post 30 days straight. I am still going through with the challenge, but know it will not be 30 essays. I am glad this exposed the holes in my logic, planning, and discipline. Now I have to figure out how to fix these issues. That may be another blog for another day. I am stealing time from another project that I wanted to work on today, probably because I’d rather be writing.
Until Next Time,
Che Michelle
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