Seven weeks ago I decided I wanted to try creating an email newsletter for The Blank Screen. Six weeks ago, the first one went out to about ten people. Today the sixth went out to forty.

I’m not saying anything about the quality of the work – though that people are adding themselves to the newsletter is enormously gratifying – but I am saying that it was an idea that became a thing.

It’s now a normal thing. I knew this morning that my day would begin with writing a Self Distract blog as ever, then that I would do the newsletter. Then I’d be off writing an article for someone else and a script for someone else, but the newsletter is a regular, locked-in part of my week now.

There was a moment when I was first bringing The Blank Screen book to the web as this news site that I thought about an email newsletter. But I thought it would be a lot to take on atop everything else. Now it’s just here and it’s normal, it’s what I do.

It’s fun and it’s hard and to make it worthwhile anyone reading it takes planning and writing effort but I know I will do it every week. I suppose it takes discipline but it doesn’t seem that way now I’ve started and it’s running. It feels more like momentum.

I think creating new things is often like an engine: it takes a huge amount of energy to start – it literally takes an explosion – but then once it’s running, it keeps on going very easily.

I thought about this today just because I mentioned to someone that this morning’s newsletter was the sixth and I stopped mid-syllable. It can’t be six weeks, can it? Six editions? Already?

The thing I’m taking away from this is that you can do new things and you can enjoy them, you just have to start.