#2 - Progress

03/09/20

'Progress' is ironically a term I’m realizing to be broader in meaning than I first thought.

When I started thinking about how ContentSolved would look as a business, as well as how it would shape my view of the content writing world, initially my progress was dictated by everything but writing.

Right now though, I think I've turned a major corner - I’m finding that my own progression as an individual is far more valuable.

As I look back over the past few weeks and how I’m putting the foundations in place for ContentSolved (have a look at last week’s post here), I notice that my confidence is growing as I further communicate with the world around me on both professional and personal levels.

For a long time, I’ve been hesitant to approach some of the people around me when it comes to writing. This is something that has actually made me quite nervous about my own writing ability. It’s made me accustomed to writing pieces of fiction or formal content and thinking to myself, “Wow, that’s terrible, nobody would ever want to read that”. This is a mindset that, whilst founded in some logic, is also a bit strange when I look at what I’m trying to do.

This is not because it's strange being nervous about taking a major step in my future, but because it's strange being nervous about whether I am good at what I do. Whilst I might be in the early stages still if I didn’t think I could forge a full-time career from it, why would I be doing it?

Having spent the past fortnight chatting to other self-starters and writers in fact, it’s nice to know that it’s a very normal feeling shared amongst people working across a variety of sectors. It’s also nice to discover there’s one easy way for me to combat it – by writing.

So that’s what I’ve been doing. That’s how I’ve progressed. Simple, right?

For the first time in ages, the other day, I sat down for 8 hours and just wrote and wrote and wrote until I basically ran out of words. Starting with a post-it note with some ideas on it, I filled a blank Microsoft Word document with 4,500 words of creative fiction. I have not felt so accomplished in a very long time. Even as I write this now having read back over it, I haven’t once paused and deleted everything like I often do the day after.

As I progress my writing confidence, so too does my progress as an individual improve. That’s a form of progression that I really hope will translate to the work I’m doing at ContentSolved.

Although I’m saying this from the bottom of a mountain I know I still have to climb, I feel like if I continue to work on my own progress first, the journey will be easier.