I'm writing a blog post every day for the next two years

I can still remember the first time I dared myself to take on a serious writing challenge. It was 2021, and I had this beautifully naïve idea: I’d publish a blog post every single day, for as long as I could keep it going (I was aiming for two years). I envisioned early mornings filled with the scent of fresh coffee, the quiet hum of a waking world, and me sitting calmly at my desk, laying down thoughts with clarity and discipline. That was the dream. The reality, as it so often is, was a sucker punch I never saw coming.

Within just a couple of months, everything went sideways. Life, it seemed, had run out of wrenches to throw into my plans, so it hurled a wrecking ball through them instead. I lost several close friends in rapid succession. People I loved, people who mattered in that deep, soul-knitting way. And right in the middle of that grief storm, my beloved cat Neji passed away too. He had been my constant through countless seasons of change and pain. It gutted me. It broke something essential in me. And the blog? The daily posts? They stopped. The words dried up. Because grief doesn’t ask for your permission. It shows up uninvited and unapologetic, and it rearranges everything. One minute I was tapping away, full of purpose. The next, I was curled inward, trying to remember how to breath.

But even in those hollow days, writing never left me. It became something quieter, more private. Like a candle flickering in the corner of a dark room. I wrote every day, just not publicly. I suspect that’s true for a lot of writers. Especially the ones fighting off perfectionism and that whispering, relentless shadow of imposter syndrome. Behind closed doors, we bleed onto pages that no one sees. In journals, unfinished drafts, random text files, we pour our hearts out. But as us to hit “Publish,” and we freeze. There’s something deeply terrifying about letting people see the rawest pieces of who we are. Even when those pieces are disguised as technical knowledge or niche expertise, like my work in flexibility training. We hesitate. We stall. We hide.

But, here I am, pulled again toward that very public challenge. That tug to try again hasn’t let me go. I often think back to a parent-teacher conference I went to with my dad, back in the dark ages of the 1990s. One of my teachers told my dad I was going to be a lawyer or a writer. My dad, a Marine vet, rancher, and touch-as-nails kind of guy, had a different vision for me. He wanted me to work on the ranch or in a military uniform. And for a while, he got his wish. I enlisted right after 9/11. But even in that structured world of the military, my teacher’s words never left me. The spark, the one that constantly whispers, “Write it down,” never died. It just got buried beneath discipline and dust and all the loudness of survival.

The military is a curious paradox for writers. On the one hand, it’s rigid and routine driven. It doesn’t exactly roll out the red carpet for creative expression. On the other, it bestows you stories you couldn’t make up if you tried. Grit. Glory. Fear. Brotherhood. Loss. Boredom so deep it ages your bones. All of it builds a reservoir of experience that can feed your writing for decades. I didn’t always have the space to process it in real time. But those moments etched themselves into me. They live in the background of my mind even now.

Of course, military life wasn’t the only thing shaping me. Grief did. Career pivots did. That awful, familiar tension between wanting to create and fearing you’re not good enough? That’s been a companion, too. Even after years of writing, with half a dozen manuscripts hiding in my drawers, I still wrestle with the voice that tells me I don’t belong in the “real” writer’s club. That my ideas are obvious, my skills are lacking, or that someone else inevitably would’ve done it better. Sprinkle perfectionism into the mis, and honestly, it’s shocking that I’ve pressed “Publish” on anything, ever.

But I keep coming back to the moments when I’ve felt most alive in my work. They were the ones when I stopped giving a damn about whether the writing was perfect. I let it flow, cleaned it up, and hit send. This challenge is about healing as much as it is forming a habit. It’s hope. It’s standing up in front of a crowd and saying, “This might not be flawless, but it’s mine, and it’s real.”

A huge part of this renewed fire came from re-reading Sarah Arnold-Hall’s experience with the challenge. Back in 2021, she committed to daily blogging for two years. No fancy rituals. Just write, post, repeat. And it changed everything for her. Not because every post was a masterpiece (she admits herself they’re not, even though I love her writing), but because she showed up. Her journey cut right through my excuses. He story shouted, “Yeah, it’s scary. Do it anyway!) And it hit me hard, because it spoke to the exact demons I wrestle with: the perfectionism, the fear, the paralysing pressure to get it right the first time.

But even before that, I’d dipped a toe in the world of professional writing. In the late 90s, teenage me wrote a military sci-fi novel. It’s my favourite genre of any medium. Books, TV shows, movies, you name it. If it’s got nasty aliens, cussing space marines with cool weapons and armour, and an interplanetary war, I’ll devour it. My novel had everything my awkward, passionate younger self loved. And, somehow, I caught the attention of a small publisher. (Way to go Teenage Dan!) They gave me a conditional offer of acceptance, pending some heavy revisions. But I didn’t have an agent. I didn’t have a clue. And I definitely didn’t have the self-belief to dive into a rewrite. So, I walked away. Or maybe I just… backed down? That manuscript is still sitting on a hard drive in a drawer in my home office. Maybe I’ll open it again someday. Maybe I won’t. But the point is, that kid had guts. He wrote something. And he had the courage to send it out. He tried. And I ow it to him (and to me now) to keep going.

These days, my energy has shifted toward nonfiction, mostly the science and real-world applications of flexibility training. I’ve spent years of my life researching, testing theories, and writing hundreds of thousands of words on the subject. And yet, every time I near the finish line on a book draft, the same old perfectionist voice shows up like clockwork, whispering, “It’s not good enough yet.”

So, this time, I’m turning the challenge into a strategy. If I post something every single day for two years, I will mess up. Some posts won’t land. Some won’t even be sharp or insightful. And that’s the point! It’s not about flawless execution. It’s about showing up even when the words feel sticky and clumsy and unfinished. Because when you do that long enough, the fear starts to shrink.

And, yeah, I know this won’t be easy. I know more than most how life has a way of interrupting the best-laid plans. Work, family, grief, burnout, and many more obstacles are all lurking. I’ve seen what happens when tragedy strike mid-challenge. But this time, I know it’s coming. I’m not (so) naïve anymore. I’m building in buffers like lists and back-ups, but most of all, forgiveness. As for what I’ll write about? Honestly, everything. Personal stories. Lessons from the military. Mental health. Book reviews. Flexibility science, obviously. It’s all part of the same mosaic. Why force it into one lane when I’m made of many?

But the biggest shift is I’m giving myself space to experiment. In 2021, I treated every blog post like it had to perfect. That’s a one-way ticket to burnout. This time, some posts will be polished essays. Others might be loose reflections or raw lists of ideas. That’s fine. That’s human. It’s also sustainable. It will get hard. There’ll be days I hate every word I write. Days I question whether this whole thing was a mistake. But I’m doing it anyway, because the real goal isn’t clicks or claps or followers. It’s growth. It’s reclaiming my voice. It’s proving to myself that I can finish something big, even when it’s messy.

And maybe, just maybe, by being open about this journey, I can help someone else along the way. Someone who’s been sitting on a draft they’re scared to finish. Someone who keeps starting blogs and walking away. Someone who needs to hear, “Hey, me too. And I’m still here, still trying.” At the end of these two years (729 blog posts from now), I hope I’ll look back and see something bigger than a pile of content. I hope I’ll see a record of transformation. A breadcrumb trail that shows how far I’ve come. Maybe I’ll finally publish those nonfiction books. Maybe I’ll dust off the old military sci-fi draft. Maybe I’ll chase something new. Whatever it is, it stars here, with this.

This challenge is about more than writing. It’s about freedom from fear and perfectionism. It’s about liberating myself from that inner critic who never shuts up. And so, here I am, declaring out loud that I’m doing this. I’m going to write every day. And if life knocks me down (again), I’ll grieve, I’ll adapt, and I’ll come back to the page. To anyone else battling the same demons: come with me. Let’s write badly. Let’s write boldly. Let’s write anyway. We don’t need to be perfect. We just need to begin.

So, this is me, starting again. Day one. Let’s go.