Writing and Creativity: Back When I had More Time!

in hive-185836 •  4 years ago 

Earlier this morning, I was looking back at some of my old posts, and some of my old writing. When I say ”old,” I mean going back to 2017 or 2018.

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Rowanberries in the sun

The thing that surprises me is how much I used to write, just a few years ago. It wasn't that unusual for me to post here two or three times a day, and also add 30 to 40 comments and other people’s posts, and to add posts to several of my off-Steemit blogs. Yes, I still have some of those...

Of course the difference was that at that time we had our small local gallery and gift shop, and I would actually be ”going to work” seven days a week. Maybe that sounds counterintuitive, but most of the time business was very slow and I would just be sitting there, staring at the wall. And so, I would write, to fill the time between visitors.

In the minutes and hours between customers coming into the Gallery, I pretty much always had a post going that I was working on, or I would be cruising around the community looking for interesting things to read and comment on.

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Yellow daisies

We closed the Gallery in the second half of 2019, and I have been working full time from home since then. The difference is that I don't have a fixed schedule anymore, and there's always something that needs to be taken care of, so I don't have hours and hours where I just ”sit and look at the wall.”

I could look back on those times with the shop and decide that it was a waste of time, but it really wasn't because it was time spent honing my writing, and building my base and body of work here on Steemit.

So, as ”they” say, things actually worked out exactly as they were supposed to. Sure, it's hard to justify that spending several years losing a bunch of money on a business that never "went" anywhere constitutes ”exactly as it's supposed to be,” but things could have been much worse. And in the end, we ended up closing this brick and mortar location quite soon before the COVID-19 pandemic began... so we didn't have to suffer through closures due to quarantines and probably going out of business in a most involuntary way.

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Thistle bloom in close-up

Anyway, one of the things I used to enjoy — but haven't done in a very very long time — is to create posts in the morning when my mind is clear and fresh.

These days, I tend to dedicate that time to catching up with my email correspondence with editing clients, and eBay customers, and writing usually gets pushed into the background and ends up being the last thing I do in the evening before I go to bed. That's ”OK”, I suppose, but it's not my favorite approach to doing things.

So this post about ”nothing in particular” is just a quick experiment in returning to the way I used to do Steemit. What will be interesting will be to see whether it reaches a whole new group of people who are awake and aware and active and looking at their feeds during different hours than when I do my usual posting after 10:00 PM at night.

If you haven't "seen" me in a while, leave me a comment!

Thanks for reading and have a great week ahead!

How about YOU? Do you have a preferred time of the day to write? Has your approach to Steemit — assuming you've been here for a long time — changed over time? Leave a comment — 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 A CROSSPOST!!!)
Created at 20210503 10:57 PDT
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  ·  4 years ago (edited)

I agree with you. I also prefer writing in the morning, when I feel the need to put down on paper fresh ideas that are boiling in my head, and dreams that otherwise would fade away into the day.