Unlocked

Throughout my formal education, I never liked writing. Looking back, I realize that what I really disliked was page and word-count requirements.

“Write a 500 word essay.”

“Your term paper should be no less than 10 pages in length.”

Those prompts always sounded horrible to me.

They still do.

In 2018, I began writing this blog. It was self-directed. There were not length requirements. There was no rubric. (At that point, there were no readers either.)

And something magical happened. In an instant, I was unlocked. I was able to write. I was unconstrained.

My posts could be short. They could be long, too, but I had no need to tease things out. I didn’t need to fill a page. I only had to let my ideas find expression in words. Nothing more.

* * *

I wonder: is there something blocking your creativity? Is it an unspoken requirement? Is it a leftover benchmark that you can now ignore?

What happens when you build space to play by the rules that you write?