At the beginning of this week, I started to see the light at the end of the tunnel.

I made a list of all of the chapters that I needed to finish and I planned out the days to complete them. As I checked each box off, I started to gain motivation and before I knew it, I only had two chapters left.

Yesterday, I finished those two chapters and now I have a complete rough draft.

Now what?

I could take a victory lap and pat myself on the back. I think that’s important, but my real goal isn’t to write just a book in a month. My goal is to write a book a month for at least a year.

I’m a week ahead of schedule. Kind of two weeks actually, because I gave myself five weeks for this first book.

I have mixed emotions as I scan the horizon from here.

There is a part of me that wants to plow ahead and take advantage of the lead I’ve given myself.

There is another part that is worried about burning myself out if I don’t pace myself.

What would you do if you were in my shoes? You’ve completed a big step in a project. You’re a head of schedule, but there is still a lot left to do. What would you do?

As I walked to work this morning, I asked myself what I wanted to do next. I have a very detailed plan in place, but it is a tentative plan. I thought I could start to work on revising my book or I could do the more fun project and start to outline the next book. That would mean I would need to commit to which book would be next.

My original plan was to write the second book in my series on Co-Teaching with Robots (teaching with AI). But there is another part of me that thinks it might be invigorating to switch gears.

I could jump ahead in the schedule or throw my plan out the window altogether.

Then, I start to ask myself why I want to change my plan already. What was wrong with the plan? Am I afraid that I’ll lose momentum again.

The second week of this project had several dips in motivation. Maybe I’m just afraid that next week I’ll run out of gas because I made the wrong decision.

I’m conflicted.

Part of this project is to challenge myself to do new things—to improve my writing—to challenge myself. Another part of this project is to actually make money. That might be the part that scares me the most.

As much as I may struggle to motivate myself, I can’t control whether other people buy my book. That scares me. I can market it till I’m blue in the face, but that is only influencing a purchase. I can’t buy it for them.

I’ve reached a milestone—a benchmark—but maybe this is also a plateau. I can go up from here, or I can stay where I’m at. I’m not sure if I’m brave enough to keep climbing.

I guess I’ll let you know next week.

Thanks for reading.

—Jacob