Because I have persistent friends who know me well enough to send me things I need to think about, this morning I watched a podcast featuring author, blogger, podcaster, and entrepreneur Seth Godin titled “Stop waiting for permission!”

You can watch It on YouTube.

It hit close to home, on a thousand levels.

He said that many of us mistakenly spend time trying to win the game we’re in instead of choosing the game we want to play.

He cautioned against the trap of becoming a “miserable lawyer” or “miserable dentist”. You don’t need to spend a lifetime somewhere you hate because you invested a lot getting there. He said the time and money you have put into a thing are a gift from your former self you don’t have to accept.

He said too many of us are still trying to win at high school. We’re trying to get invited to the cool kids table instead of making our own table.

Then he said something particularly provocative to me today.

Godin said there’s no such thing as writer’s block. It’s an invention. Because nobody gets talker’s block.

He said show me your bad writing. If you have bad writing, you don’t have writers block.

He learned that to get better at writing, he had to get better at talking. It made him better at thinking.

And that messed me up.

I have spent a lifetime wrestling with the self-censor that slows and muzzles me.

It’s the voice that tells me nothing I do is good enough.

In high school and college I spent hours staring at blank pages and screens because I was trying to create something perfect in one shot.

I would try to write for content, and style, and rhythm, and format, all at once.

And, as a result, I would write nothing.

I would lose sleep.

I’d be asking for extensions.

I’d be miserable.

Church helped me greatly with this, because it was the ultimate non-negotiable deadline. It doesn’t matter what obstacles I did or didn’t face during the week. It doesn’t matter how great the thing is I plan to produce. All that matters is it’s 11am, on Sunday. And I can’t tell a congregation that they will be blessed if they just come back next week.

So the real-time threat of public humiliation has enabled me to overcome my own perfectionism.

Everywhere I else I have suffered in wordless silence.

Even in blogging I will go through bursts of productivity, followed times when I think I have nothing of sufficient value to share. It has _never_ served me.

So I am taking a page from Godin’s consecration.

I’m going to write, and publish, every day.

Some pieces may be short.

Some may not fit the overarching themes I’ve been chasing.

But they’ll be on social media. And on my blog. And coming soon to a theater near you.

And If you don’t like them, you are welcome not to read.

But I think, like many of us, I have spent way too much time writing for my harshest critics, whether they are my haters, or the hater in me.

So today, I’m trying something new.

And I invite you to join me.