I failed

On February 10th, I set myself a challenge: to write for 100 consecutive days. Those of you who have been paying attention (why on earth have you been paying attention to this?!) will have noticed that I failed spectacularly, only manging to do 11 days. Part of my motivation for doing this was that, although I spend quite a bit of time critiquing and editing the writing of others - my students, colleagues, and collaborators, I spend very little of my time actually writing.

Although it feels somewhat facile to say that I "learned something" from such a short excise it is clear that, in order to write, I need a purpose - i.e., something to write about. And, for me at least, writing about random thoughts probably isn't motivating enough. Maybe I just haven't found me niche yet.

In any case, failure is part of being an academic - we fail all the time and most academics fail more often than they succeed. But we acknowledge the failure, learn from them, and move on.