This is my 1,000th blog post
This is the 1,000th blog post I’ve written for my website. Here are four things I’ve learned about creativity since I started my blog in January 2018.
1 - Ideas are only half the battle
Having a good idea for a blog post (or any creative project) is important. It’s tough to start creating without initial inspiration. But ideas are only half the battle. Execution is the other half, and it counts way more than ideas.
It’s important to execute well on your good ideas. However, during the process of executing on an idea, you’ll see new ideas spring up out of your initial ideas. You’ll create things you never would have been able to conceive of, if you just act on your first ideas.
This is why prolific creatives make great work. Yes, the reps refine their process and craft. But time spent being in the creative process yields more ideas than you could ever think of sitting by idly. In writing, a sub-point leads to a new epiphany. In music, a noodle leads to a new melody. In sculpture, the molding of materials shows you a new form you never thought of before.
Many people hesitate to create because they don’t have any good ideas. They fail to recognize that action generates even better ideas.
2 - Small things add up
You hear it all the time and it’s really true. Small things add up. The effects of writing 1,000 short blog posts combined into outcomes that are greater than the sum of the words written.
On the base level, the days I wrote were better than the days I didn’t. I wrestled with concepts and developed new opinions that have enriched my work and my life. I have proof of 1,000 days in which I wrestled with thoughts, found interesting quotes, and presented helpful ideas. Even if I never published my writing, it would have been well worth it.
On an outward level, having written hundreds upon hundreds of blogs gives me a credibility that few others can claim. I wrote most of the blogs through a series of short daily writing challenges—30 days in a row in 2018, 60 in a row in 2019, 100 in 2020, 365 in 2021, two hundred more from 2022-2024, and now more than 200 in a row in 2025. Lots of people give advice about consistency and growth. I’ve lived it for seven and a half years now.
On an achievement level, many of these blog posts became the core content of my first book. Much of my writing about the freelance experience from 2018 through 2022 became the chapters of my first book (What Gives You the Right to Freelance?). I consider these blog posts “draft zero.” They’re a low-pressure way to chisel out ideas, and find a way to write about them that connects with readers. I’m grateful to have written a fair amount content about my thoughts throughout the past seven years. It’s one thing to try to remember how someone early in their journey feels. It’s another to have it all documented.
3 - The more you do it, the more you love it
“If I force myself to create every single day, will that eventually steal the joy from my art?”
This is a question I wrestled with for years on my journey toward creative consistency. Inspiration and motivation (and maybe a little bit of ADHD) got me into new creative mediums, but then disappeared when I needed them the most. When inspiration ran dry, or when I got tired, or when life got busy, or when the work didn’t feel good, I stopped creating. I stopped because I didn’t want to force myself to create when I didn’t feel like it.
Then I started forcing myself to create, even when I didn’t feel like it. Something amazing happened. I started loving the work even more. I developed a deeper connection with my creativity, and cultivated it into something more meaningful in my life on multiple levels, as I described above.
When I first took on my daily blogging challenges in 2018 and 2019, there were more than a few days when I was lying in bed, about to fall asleep after a wall-to-wall day, but then realized I hadn’t written yet that day, so I got myself out of bed to write. I look back fondly on those nights. Even though I had no readers, and I was exhausted, I was developing my own special relationship with the work. Like the early days of dating, I got butterflies about the work. I wanted to prove that I could be a good match for the work. I wanted to woo it, as it was slowly wooing me.
4 - You should spend it all right now
Annie Dillard has a quote in her book The Writing Life that I love. She says this. “One of the things I know about writing is this: spend it all, shoot it, play it, lose it, all, right away, every time. Do not hoard what seems good for a later place in the book or for another book; give it, give it all, give it now.” She goes on to tell us “Something more will arise for later, something better.”
Early in my creative journey, good ideas came to me, and I tried to save them for a more meaningful project. “This is too good to share now,” I would think to myself. This was nothing but an unproductive daydream. As if my first idea was really that good. As if vultures were waiting to steal my ideas (I could be so lucky then—I had no readers!) As if consistency and commitment to the craft wouldn’t lead to better ideas. It all reeks of hubris and scarcity.
A creative garden grows within you. The soil is fertile. Tend to it every day, and it will yield a beautiful little harvest for you and your community. But try to keep an idea on the vine, and it’ll only rot. Try to store it away, and it wilts. It loses flavor. You have an unending abundance of creativity within you. To be human is to be creative. If you have a good idea today, share it with us. It will only lead to a better creative idea tomorrow, and a better one the day after.
A note for the first thousand…
I am grateful for the people who have read a few hundred, a few dozen, or even just a few of my 1,000 blogs. I started this blog with one constraint in mind. I generated ideas and edited copy with that same constraint. “Is this helpful to a creative person?” That was the only criteria, and it led me to hundreds of amazing places.
If you have ambitions to create more, but 1,000 days of it sounds daunting, don’t start there. I didn’t. I started with a few days, then challenged myself to a few more, and a few more after that. Follow your interest. Cultivate it. A day spent creating is a good day. You don’t need to think much further beyond that. The rest will fall into place.
If your read this far, thank you. If you want to read some blogs that stand out in my mind over the years, check out the links below.
My learnings from 30 blogs in 30 days
My learnings from 100 blogs in 100 days
Why you must publish your work
How WalkJog used the creative sprint to write their next EP
The weird YouTube wiffle ball guy
