Allow me to repeat myself

What if I’m just on a loop?

Learning to loop in a better way is a must.

I keep a lot of handwritten journals, for a variety of reasons, but I also keep some digital journals using an app called DayOne. I started using the app at the recommendation of a friend, way back around 2013. So I have lots of years of entries in there.

And something the app does that I really like is ping me each morning asking if I want to take a look back at this day, throughout the years. I do, usually. If I’m not crunched for time or trying to get on with something else, I enjoy swiping back in time, seeing what I was thinking on this exact date maybe one, two, ten, twelve years ago. Sometimes, I vividly remember that moment. Other times, memories will sneak up on me.

“I wrote that?” I’ll ask myself. And DayOne assures me I did. Every now and then there are even pictures.

So, I like rediscovering the lost stuff. Sometimes, when I have a spare moment while traveling, waiting in an airport or a hotel lobby, or just winding down in a coffee shop after the real writing is done... well, it’s sometimes a good time to just pontificate a bit. Some of the most poetic things I’ve ever written came from those random, time-killing moments. A lot of what you read here, on The Writer_, started in one of those journal entries, written with my thumbs if I didn’t happen to bring a keyboard with me.

Then there are the other things. The overly familiar things. The complaints or wishes or demands upon myself that are somehow on a loop. Often, almost alarmingly, they appear word for word on that day, over and over (and over and over) again.

There are themes. Life, career, relationships. I lament, often, that my writing career isn’t quite where I expected it to be at age 40, 45, 50. And in those entries, I usually “proclaim a decision.” I always write this as if I have come to a profound turning point, as if from this second on, starting with the period at the end of this sentence, I am changed. I am new. I am an entirely different man from when I opened the app and started typing. Cue the 80s pop music montage.

I announce a plan, in those posts. “I’m going to commit to reaching out to ten media outlets per week, to book interviews and promote my books.” Things like that. Reasonable, really, in the grand scheme of things. Doable. Advisable. And I often do follow through on those proclamations. For a time.

Eventually, if I don’t get the result I was hoping for, or if the act becomes too cumbersome and time consuming, taking me away from the writing (the entire point of it all), then it’ll fade. It’ll disappear from my conscious mind, only to reappear in another entry a year or so later, sometimes on the exact same day.

And then I make a new, eerily similar proclamation, and the loop resets, begins again.

And a year or so later, again.

I have entries going back to the very beginning of my time in the app that feel like deja vu all over again. And it isn’t just limited to DayOne.

Looking back over my handwritten journals, going back decades, I often see patterns. Wants I have, dreams about who I will be and the success I will achieve. Turns of phrase that I could lift from one decade and drop in another without creating even a speck of confusion.

It’s like living in a mild version of Groundhog Day.

There’s probably some profound lesson to learn from this. If I look back at enough journal entries, maybe I’ll find where I’ve explored it a few times.

I think, though, that it may actually be a good sign. Because whatever else you might say about me—as a writer, as man, as a husband—I have at least proven to be consistent in my desires, and even in my actions, with the goal of improving. And, accepting the definition of insanity as “doing the same thing again and again and expecting a different result each time,” maybe it’s a bit of helpful insanity. Benign insanity. Useful insanity.

Here’s where I can break the pattern, if I’m willing: All I have to do is look back at all those entries, note the things I keep saying I want to change, and the things I keep retrying in the name of changing them and... do something different.

If my plan was “go it alone,” maybe I find a partner to help. If it has always been “buckle down and write twice as much,” maybe I relax and write less, just better. If it’s “reach out to a hundred media outlets,” maybe it becomes “dial it back, pick three outlets, and make myself un-ignorable to them.”

And if I try all that and it doesn’t work, if I look back a year from now and can see that my effort was in vain, then the loop needs to be try something different again.

The point of keeping track of your goals and desires, and what you’re trying so you can accomplish them, is to learn from your experience and grow from it.

If I’m in an insanity loop, my own personal Groundhog Day, the only way out is to do it again but different. Pull over and turn the car around. Take the left turn instead of the right turn for once.

Some things, like writing every day, have worked out great for me. That’s a loop that benefits me. Consistency in what I create, the discipline of doing the work every day, that’s produced some very cool results for my life. More books written. More posts (like this one) written. A steadily growing audience or readers. All wonderful and desirable outcomes.

If I want to bump that up and increase it, if I need that to “10X” or expand beyond the bubble I’ve been in, then I have to look closely at what I’m doing, compare the results I’m getting against my goals, and then do something different all over again.

What, exactly?

No idea. Not yet. But I at least have years and decades of things I’ve already tried that I know are not working. Anything new I try has the potential to be an improvement.

So, time to break the loop. A year from now I want to look back on the entries from this day and say, “Wow... things are so different now.”

That’s something I don’t mind repeating, year over year.

SOMETHING I’M DEFINITELY NOT CHANGING...

Writing is what I do. It’s who I am. You don’t go around referring to yourself as The Writer_ if you’re not willing to put the words on the page every day. So you can count on me to keep showing up at the keyboard, for the rest of my life or until something stops me. I prefer the former.

If you like that plan, then you can help me keep going. Buy one of my books, and recommend to others that they do the same. And when you’ve read that book, if you loved it, then please write a review on Amazon, Goodreads, and anywhere else you can think of.

You’ll find all my books here: https://kevintumlinson.com/books

A NOTE AT THE END

Yesterday I interviewed someone for the Wordslinger Podcast, and after the show we kept chatting. I don’t remember how we swung around to this, but at some point I started telling him about the little underscore in the title of this Substack. I was explaining “The Writer_” as a concept, as a brand mark, even as a sort of logo. “That underscore is meant to represent a cursor,” I said. “If I could make it blink everywhere it appears, I would.”

I’d been thinking a lot bout this concept, because I’m writing something in which I explain it in great detail. Something that isn’t ready to go public yet, but will, eventually.

“I saw your post about that on Facebook,” he said.

I blinked.

“You did?” I asked. I didn’t remember posting about it on Facebook. But later, looking back, I see that I did. I also posted something here, and in my DayOne journal, and heck, even on a 3x5 notecard stuck to the little magnetic chalkboard to the right of my desk. When I mentioned it to Kara she said, “Yeah, you’ve told me about that a hundred times already.”

I don’t remember talking about it quite that much. But clearly I had.

Looking back on those journal entries, the repeat dreams and goals and even complaints, I realize now that part of my process for solving a problem or seeing a dream or goal through involves “looping.” That shouldn’t come as a surprise. It’s a method I use in my writing, as well.

I tend to play things back, revisit them, review them, revise them, try to chisel and refine them as I go. I do it instinctivley, though. In my life, at least. Not as intentionally as I should. And I definitely need to change that.

Because consistency is kind of superpower, letting you accomplish incredible, seemingly impossible things. But only if you include one additional ingredient: Intention.

Intentional consistency will let you reroute rivers and erect fortresses. You can perfect skills and improve on talents. It’s not practice that makes perfect, it’s perfect practice, done consistently and intentionally.

I’m 52 years old. I have not always adhered to this as a philosophy. But when I have, that’s when I’ve gotten all my best results, and all my best stories.

So... maybe I should loop back and learn from all those experiences. Stop the insanity loop, and star the intetion loop.

My future self will thank me.

FIND MY BOOKS AT https://kevintumlinson.com/books