For
almost a decade I have written a blog post once a week. If I look
back on the years 2010 to 2018, I can sum up all my posts into
categories: things I wanted to share, blocks of instructions, book
reviews, reading lists, author interviews and rants that I called “a
call to arms.” After the first year or so, I found it difficult to
keep coming up with something to write about. Every year in December
when thinking about what I wanted to do for the coming year, I would
try to plan things out. At best I could come up with a few ideas,
often seasonal things.
For
2019, I thought I would write my manifesto. Over the years I would
think about my manifesto or at the very least what my manifesto would
be like. I could never come up with anything particularly. I have so
many pages of musings, and sketches of ideas, but I never completed a
single thing. So, knowing this about myself, why now? Why 2019? And
furthermore, what would my manifesto be like? After all, I don't live
in a secluded cabin with a personal vendetta against anyone or
anything. I really don't care about anything. Part of it is apathy,
and part of it is that I have gotten to think about the things I
wanted to think about, and I've always gotten to do all the things
that I've ever wanted to do. A manifesto for a guy like me is not
really something I would need to do.
But,
I was faced with 52 blog posts for the year 2019. I decided that I
would make a cohesive piece of writing that I would then split up
over the entire year. I decided to have exactly 12 chapters of about
4,000 words each that I would make into 4 blog posts of 1,000 words
each. I would post on Wednesdays. Not a bad way of doing things. Then
I decided that I would share something, a Youtube video or something
else that would enhance my series in those months when there were
five Wednesdays.
So,
then, what would I write about?
Well,
I took to my heroes. I looked at all the chapter headings that Henry
David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson had. I looked at the various
points of the Scout Law that I know so well from my time with The Boy
Scouts of America. I came up with nearly twenty chapter titles. Then
I narrowed it down to twelve.
Then
I wrote.
The
two things I was hoping to achieve with this exercise were these: a
cohesive manuscript and an ease in the writing of a year's worth of
blog posts. I feel successful on both counts. I feel like I could
read this entire year's worth of posts as a single manuscript-style
manifesto. And I also feel like it was an easy thing to write. Every
time I sat down to write, I knew exactly where I was, where I was
heading and where I have been.
In
short, it was a great experience.