Lately I’ve been getting back to writing the “real” StandUpRight.ca. By that I mean the StandUpRight.ca I envisioned when I started bleating on this little corner of the intertubewebnet. The one where I right about posture, and pain, and exercise and so on, not so much on political culture, depression and success.
An Evolution
Over the time I’ve been publishing here I’ve altered the focus of my writing. Each change grew out of the things that came before, as I went deeper into the topics that interested me. My forays into ergonomics and remote work were a logical extension of my work on posture and pain mitigation and even my shift into success blogging wasn’t too much of a stretch, given it came out of my thoughts on home office ergonomics and remote work. And then…
BANG
Depression and my rage at the insanity that has engulfed our political and cultural landscapes became so great a focus of mine that I started up a YouTube channel devoted almost entirely to my mental health struggles.
Hell, I even started a Pinterest page to post inspirational quotes about mental health.
For the last month or so, I’ve noted a curious dichotomy. Health, fitness and raging at the fascist pukes in Queens Park and on Parliament Hill here, struggles with depression over at YouTube.
A Merging Emerges
But these things are starting to merge. I’ve begun to see that the ideas and methods to each medium cross pollinate into the other. Which is to say that the things I do to create content for my YouTube channel apply here. Likewise things I do here help with my videos.
Some of the crossover is obvious. I have recently decided to make a serious effort to improve my writing. To do so I’m taking the advice of several successful writers that, if I want to write better, I need to write every day. So, I do.
The idea behind writing every day is incremental improvement. If I can improve my writing 1% per day, then in a matter of a few months, I’ll be twice as good as when I started. That attitude can be applied to recording videos.
If I record a video every day, and get 1% better every day, then, similar to my writing, in a matter of a few months I’ll be twice as good as when I started.
In the other direction, one of the attitude videos is An Attitude of Abundance, the idea that the more you create, the more you can create, which I see with my writing. When I sit down to write each day, I have no trouble finding something to write about.
The same thing is happening with my videos. Every time I record a video I find ideas for the next one.
Even Better
Even better than the different media reinforcing each other, the very things unique to each is helping with the other. What I mean by that is that applying the ideas of overcoming my struggles with depression is helping with my writing. Likewise working on my writing is helping with my mental health problems.
For example, one of the things I stress about getting out of the vicious cycle of depression is to keep busy. 5 minutes to record a video, and maybe another 5 minutes to get it set up for publishing on YouTube doesn’t really keep me busy.
But writing and editing a few hundred words every day, usually twice a day? That takes more time, keeping me busy, and helping to keep me out of the downward spiral.
Another thing I stress about overcoming mental health problems is that busy for its own sake is of limited use, you must keep busy doing something useful. Well, I have a goal to be a freelance writer. Writing, editing and publishing one or two articles per day, improving my writing skills and improving my ability to create content moves me toward that goal.
Going in the other direction, the more I write, the more orderly are my thoughts. Each article takes a bit less time to write, and a bit less time to edit. This ordering of my thought processes means, in turn, that I can create a short, ad hoc video with fewer stops and restarts.
In turn, this means I can create more, faster, better. Moving me towards my dual goals of getting on top of my struggles with depression, and becoming a freelance writer.
