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There is One Big Reason You Should Click the “Publish” Button

But it’s not as straightforward as I thought.

This post did not turn out the way I planned it.

I had intended on a simple listicle: 5 Reasons You Should Get Over Yourself and Just Click “Publish.” Some variation of that, anyway.

It came from a comment on my article about how freeing it is to write every day; my writing no longer feels so precious that I have to worry about whether or not to post it.

Here’s Another Secret & Surprising Benefit to Publishing Every Day.

One of the commenters had thanked me for it (such a wonderful feeling) and said that she had been too shy to post her writing yet — but my article had gotten her “closer to pressing the Publish button!”

I read that, and smiled, and thought Just press it! There it was, the article that needed to be written: all the reasons you should publish your articles.

I even had a half-created list, with golden nuggets of motivational wisdom like:

1. No one will really care, so just press publish!
2. Somebody really needs to hear what you have to say, so just press publish!
3. Completing things even when they’re not perfect is the only way to move forward in life, so just press publish!
4. Even with crappy articles, Medium notices when your name pops up, so just press publish!
5. It’s a day that ends with -y, just press publish!

You get the idea.

That article might have been pretty good, except for one word that kept popping up.

Can you guess the word?

It’s “just”.

That list up there — and that article I almost wrote — is exactly what progressives are talking about when they use the phrase “unexamined privilege.”

You see, I read another comment from another writer here — someone who just discovered…