Let’s get meta and blog about blogging for a bit, alright? It’s either that, or we start talking about Winter Soldier spoilers (protip: GO SEE IT).

Sometimes, I wonder if I’m not writing as much as I could. Most of my posts seem to run about 500 words, and sometimes that just doesn’t feel like enough to do a subject justice. In fact, on larger topics, I’ve been breaking up my commentary into multiple posts. And I have to wonder: is this amount too little? Am I hamstringing myself, making it difficult to get truly in-depth on any one thing? Do I need to force myself to write more?

These are the sorts of thoughts that often eat away at me from inside my mind. After all, I wouldn’t be me if I didn’t have something to worry and feel guilty about.

But whereas musings of inadequacy like this could turn into brooding, I realized something. I am writing a lot. I’m writing about 500 words a day. You know what else works out to be about 500 words? The standard 5-paragraph essay they had us do in school. So I’m basically writing an essay a day, something I didn’t do even when I was in college.

By my standards back then, that’s a lot of writing. Sure, I may not be writing a painstakingly-researched exposé every day like I see on big news blogs. But they’re getting paid to do that; I am not. They likely have a team of writers and researchers; I am but one person. They have readership numbers in the thousands; I have a handful.

But still I write. And while I admit it would be nice to have a ton of readers, writing was the original purpose behind this blog. I need to remember that. I also need to remember that denigrating one’s own accomplishments just because they don’t match up in scope to someone else’s is unfair. Making a slight bit of progress and throwing it away because it’s not a large amount of progress is not cool. Heck, a lot of “big name” writers out there probably got their start similarly, toiling away in anonymity. By definition we (the public) tend to only see someone who has already put in the countless hours of blood, sweat, and tears before they even got to their current place. It’s not fair to compare your own first draft to someone else’s published, illuminated manuscript.

So what have I done? Well, rather than feel inadequate given my written output, I’ve decided to say “screw that noise” and look what I’ve already been able to accomplish so far. I have a blog! It’s regularly updated! I write every day! Sure, the entries may be short, but it’s a format that comes quickly and easily to me. And I’m writing more than I was when I started this blog, maybe even throughout most of my schooling career. In other words, I’m already awesome.

Boo-yah.