ANCHIT TO TAKE STEPS OVER MONDAY’S MURDER AFTER BEING LATE (AGAIN)
Kafka's diary and my Monday
Dear founder,
Like July, and like every school and college examination ever, I write this at the last minute.
I know. I gave you my word that I would write to you weekly.
But the imaginary principles about writing quality that I have acquired bounce around in my head. Mixed with the imaginary operating principles of Anchit's Blog, they make a deadly cocktail of mental diarrhea — like a suit of armor made from excuses.
I had the entire month.
Had all of yesterday's Monday to write a letter to you. For you.
Now it feels like I am writing at you.
My calendar was clear. No calls. No sound in my room except the ceiling fan. No pressing deadlines. No rush to do cold outreach because God brings you rich qualified inbound leads out of thin air.
There was nothing between me and this blog.
Yet still, I wrote nothing.
I gave some tasks to the gracious armies of the Claude. Listened to 3 podcasts. Scrolled X to keep up with the planet. And pissed off a 6'3" pizzaiolo to gather lore for the grand launch post of my website.
But I wrote nothing.
I even read an article from a millionaire ghostwriter who writes 10,000 words every morning.
THAT'S 30 PAGES BEFORE LUNCH! EVERY DAY!
I read the number twice, only to realize I am eons away from the "great writer" I aspire to be, so I close my laptop out of spite. Then open it again. I can't even string 3 words together. So I write the same word thrice. Delete delete. Make another crappy sentence. Backspace again. But all that came out were pieces of shite.
I produced nothing but a few clicks on my creamy Keychron K2 mechanical keyboard.
And I consumed all kinds of shit and told myself what I always tell myself — tomorrow.
114 Augusts ago, Franz Kafka’s boss left the office for a few weeks.
Kafka had all the time. And the desire. He had, he writes, a "tremendous world" inside him. "I want to write, with a constant trembling on my forehead."
There is a feverish concentration about him. He sees writing as a form of prayer. A trial. A psychological compulsion.
Yet over and over he criticizes himself for falling short of his desire, for thwarting his talent with insecurity and lack of discipline.
“Wrote nothing,” he laments, entry after entry.
"Nothing, nothing."
"Have written nothing for three days," he sulks, absorbed in his creative block.
“Bad,” he declares a perfect orangey day for having produced no writing. And proceeds to stretch out on his bed to watch the light cross the floor while his desk sits empty. He has blamed his desk before. 2 Christmases earlier he inspected it and decided "nothing good can be done on it." His other excuses too — the day job, the long hours, the exhaustion, the boss — are on leave.
Franz has a case of the blues. And he sure sings a lot like yesterday.
You are always acting.
Even when you do nothing. Especially when you do nothing.
3 things must align before you act:
- A dissatisfaction with your current situation
- A mental image of something better
- The belief that your effort can bridge the gap between 1 and 2
Belief precedes action.
Belief is precisely what breaks within. Not your desire. Not your vision. But the conviction that putting your name and pen to work will produce something worth reading is what breaks within. When it breaks, you don’t stop wanting, you don’t stop seeing — you stop believing that the distance between wanting and having can be walked.
So you lie down. Not out of laziness. But because the bridge is broken.
Whenever I consume more than I create, something as small as a familiar stranger who can fill 30 pages before lunch while I've barely spilled 300 words and backspaced the entire time can feel like the bridge is cracking.
And I cannot do anything about it because I, in unawareness, have chosen paralysis over production.
If you are your own worst invigilator:
Maybe the business is having a tough time as you read this. Growth is stalled. The welcome email campaign has been sitting in drafts for 6 months. How does your infrastructure change in the exponential age? There is an abundance of operational challenges.
You know the drill. As an audacious founder, you signed up for putting out fires on a daily basis.
But audaciousness is a lonely luxury only a few can afford. And it shan't cause you to mistake the distance between me and the millionaire ghostwriter for light years when it is a short stroll between me and the version of me who sits down at his desk.
It shan't.
The belief that your effort can close the gap between your dissatisfaction and desire will not come through intellectual understanding. It will come through one completed action.
Not the entire book but a paragraph of 6 sentences.
Not the perfect draft but 1 really bad paragraph that exists instead of the perfect pleasant prose that does not.