Every Sunday For Eight Years

This blog is a labour of love, and it will always be free. Over 1,000 people read every post which is incredible. And if just 100 people donate €2 it means that I’ll be able to continue doing all of this for another year. So if you like the work, it would mean the world to me if you considered making a donation. Thank you to everyone who already has this year. There’s no expectations, as ever, and I hope you have a lovely week. Donate here

I’ve been writing this blog since May of 2016. Back then, it was more about posting hot takes that were too long to post on Twitter. I was 21, new to writing, and hadn’t even figured out that writing was what I wanted to do.

Here we are then, almost eight years later, and I’m past the point of feeling uncomfortable about describing myself as a writer. I’ve been doing this every Sunday over that period (with the very rare few Sundays that I didn’t have time/forgot) Some blogs have been better than others. Some have been absolutely lazy and uninteresting. But the point is, each weekend I sit down here to write something.

And that consistency has brought many friendships, opportunities, awards, recognition. And it’s not an overnight success story. This has been slow, incremental. If I was looking for a fast appreciation I would have given up years ago – in the beginning almost nobody read what I post here.

The reason I say all that is because consistency is what caused all the positive outcomes. It had far less to do with talent, and far more to do with showing up every Sunday, when no one was watching, and firing out a blog. I think we live in a world that wants instant results, immediate gratification. So we tend to give up on things because we don’t see the results we want quick enough. For example, I know quite a lot of people who’ve started podcasts and given up a few short weeks later. We desire results, but we don’t always want to face the reality that it takes years of work to get them.

And so, using this analogy of the blog, I have come to realise this is true for everything else in our life too, including mental health. Looking after it can be tedious, monotonous, boring. Making the right decisions for ourselves isn’t always synchronous with the decisions we want to make. We have to be disciplined, consistent. We have to show up every day and do the work that no one else can see.

That isn’t to say there aren’t other factors at play. You can show up for your mental health and still face mental health struggles. I’m not trying to say it’s entirely in our control. But some of it is. And if we want the results we desire in any aspect of our life, we have to be ready to spend years working at it, showing up every Sunday to write a blog, and take solace in the fact that we’re running in the right direction.