I have this story in my head, that the longer I go without writing a note here, the better that note has to be when I do eventually come back and post again.
I was looking on the internet to see if this is a common thought pattern - that if something is infrequent, it must be excellent.
I couldn't find anything like that on the psych blogs, so I have to assume that I've taken the phrases "quality over quantity" or "quantity over quality" and turned that in to believing "quantity" and "quality" must be mutually exclusive.
You can post infrequently, and have each of those posts be an absolute banger, or you can regularly put out stuff that's okay.
You can't post average shit every now and then.1
Footnotes
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You can, of course. And so can I, as long as I ignore the voice in my head telling me I can't. ↩︎
Comments
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Declan Chidlow
You certainly aren't alone here. I'm unfortunately guilty of it as well.
Adam C
I call this the "expectations curve", which is roughly a straight line from the origin, up and to the right, with time on the x-axis and expected output quality on the y-axis.
We generally want to stay above the line (success) and can actively feel when we're below the line (real or potential failure) and by how much. Time is not an ally with the expectations curve.
The line is made up, of course, but that doesn't make it any less real lol
Emily
Never has a single footnote given me a greater sense of peace.
Thank you for putting into words (in whatever quantity or quality) something I (and I’m sure so many others) so badly needed to hear.
Dan Q
So very true. I used to suffer from this a lot.
My solution was to force myself to write more, at least in the short term. Quality be dammed! And then reduce my frequency again. By the time I'd retrained by brain to see that nobody cared if I produced mediocre content, it took away a lot of the anxiety about publishing something after a long gap.
Well, not entirely. But it helped.