On Repeating Yourself

Recently, I’ve been struggling to come up with ideas to write about. It’s not that I don’t have anything to write about, it’s that I constraint myself to write about a new idea every day. When you write every day for as long as I have, that becomes difficult. The other day I was going to write about an idea but then I remembered that I wrote about it in 2021. Yet, no one is going to remember the piece I wrote about in 2021.

It’s okay to repeat yourself. Many writers repeat similar ideas again and again and just phrase them in different ways. Repeating yourself is necessary for an idea to stick.

James Taylor’s most popular song is Fire and Rain. Whenever you go to a James Taylor concert, you anticipate the moment he sings this song.

James Taylor has sung this song maybe thousands of times in his career. I’m sure it gets tiring. But a true professional can perform the same song 10,000 with the enthusiasm of when he sang it for the first time.

The Ocky Way is a deli chef in the Bronx known for making custom sandwiches using his signature style called The Ocky Way. Each Ocky Way video features familiar catchphrases like “Suuuure!” and “Can’t forget the Bev?” The repetitive format of his videos is oddly captivating, with viewers eagerly awaiting these catchphrases. This style is reminiscent of the appeal of a catchy slogan, joke, or phrase.