Sometimes the Relevance of Our Ideas Change!

As a writer, I often write notes to myself, and I will go off into a fit of inspiration, sit down and type out the "bones" of an idea that I hope to turn into an article at a later point.

These, then, and up in my big "Ideas folder" and I'll revisit them at some future time when I have more time to clean them up. Sounds good, right?

It is funny how coming back for a second look at those ideas — armed with the hindsight of a few weeks, a few months, and even a few years — will reveal that whatever I thought was a great idea in the moment, now looks outright silly and like a waste of time, all because I've had a chance to think about it and gain a new perspective (and perhaps some wisdom!) since the original point of writing.

Some ideas just lose their sense of importance with time.

Sometimes, a lot of ideas lose their sense of importance over time!

Earlier this evening, I wasn't feeling particularly inspired to sit down and come up with something creative for a blog post, so I went wandering through my ideas folder to see if I could find a mostly written article there that I could polish up a bit, add to... and end up with something fresh, new and interesting.

Instead, I ended up with the mildly depressing surprise that the first half dozen or so articles I looked at seemed utterly irrelevant and even poorly conceived, so instead of creating something with them as a basis, I instead ended up just deleting them.

If you are a fellow writer, you probably know what I'm talking about! And if you're not, trust me, this really does happen!

In a way, it serves as an effective illustration of the fact that what we're thinking about constantly changes, and constantly develops, and constantly evolves to where — even from our own perspective — what we were considering and contemplating as being "valuable insight" last year now seems old and out of date.

Granted, at least half of the articles I discarded today were so heavily and obviously influenced by Covid that today they read like yesterday's news.

As I evaluated my predicament, I found myself thinking back to my University days, where I typically did most of my best work spur of the moment, rather than in a planned and responsible fashion.

On a remarkable number of occasions, I would sit down — at what we back then called a "word processor" — and I would write a 2000-word paper from start to finish without stopping to edit, and barely end up changing anything in it, even after review. And it would end up being an "A" paper!

My carefully planned and well researched efforts? They were seldom as good, and they seldom flowed as well. I guess even the professors who read them felt like I was struggling to be inspired, and it reflected in my grades.

I found myself chuckling slightly at the realization that all these years later, I still look at writing more from the perspective of "what kind of grade I would give myself," than on anything like public accolades, feedback or whether I'm going to end up earning good rewards on Steemit!

Not suggesting the latter don't matter to me, they're just the lesser of the considerations. Even if grades have become utterly irrelevant! And so, we circle back around to the changing relevance of our ideas: In this case, I really need to stop thinking in terms of "being graded!"

Thanks for stopping by, and have a great weekend!

How about you? Do you ever revisit old notes, and wonder WHY you thought an idea was so important? Do you mostly work "in the moment" or do you prefer to carefully plan and schedule things? Leave a comment if you feel so inclined — share your experiences — be part of the conversation!

(All text and images by the author, unless otherwise credited. This is ORIGINAL CONTENT, created expressly for this platform — Not posted elsewhere!)

Created at 2024.03.16 01:23 PDT
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