Two years ago today, I began my weekday publishing practice here on Free Refills with a piece entitled, "Planting a Seed.”
I did it because it was time. I had been called, years before, with an insight: The Internet changes everything. In the new world, you don't need anyone's permission. You do the work. You write, and you publish. You don't need to declare yourself to be a writer. You do the work, and the work does it for you.
Two years ago today, I truly began to answer that call.
"By changing the boundaries under which the game is played," I said, "you change the game itself."
I made a promise, to myself and to all who were there to see it. I promised I would publish a new piece of writing every weekday, backed every week by 5,000 words of drafting.
"Today is the equinox," I said, "and right here I am planting a seed."
I would publish every weekday like it was my job. I would publish every weekday because it was my job. In two years--more than 520 pieces now--I have never missed my daily deadline.
What I did not do was tell the world about it. I felt I needed a clearer idea of what I was doing before I began to share it. So far I'm just writing about the process, I told myself. Who is going to find that kind of thing interesting?
The last sentence of that first piece was this: "I still don't know what exactly is going to sprout."
In recent weeks I have read over those earliest pieces, and two years on, I have the perspective to see what I was doing there. Those pieces coherently tell the story of the early days of this experiment. They teach. And they are very, very good.
Who's going to care about pieces about process? Over recent weeks, I've come to a new understanding of that question. I've started to find my way to something that can only be called faith. I long ago came to understand that the best work happens when I get my ego out of the way and just allow what needs to come through to come through. The universe asks me to become a channel, and I allow it happen. The faith, though, is this: the universe doesn't play tricks. If you're called to speak, the universe will bring ears to listen.