It only took about a week and half for the initial burst of energy and enthusiasm to wear off. I think I might’ve been right about the rogue estrogen spike. Ah well, it was grand while it lasted.
I woke up tired that day, and instead of going directly to my manuscript (well, after feeding the cat, feeding the dog, walking the dog, putting a load of laundry in, making a cup of tea…), I took myself to the pages of my journal to wring my metaphorical hands about how tired I was and did that mean the energy and enthusiasm had worn off?
Spoiler alert: it had.
I then went on to enumerate the ways in which I was mistaken in thinking this resurrection of my writing career was a good idea. There are so many, far more attractive, options, after all.
In times past, that would’ve been it. I can always expertly justify to myself all of the reasons why I need to ‘take a break’1 (which is code for ‘give up’ in my personal self-sabotage-related lexicon), all of them extremely convincing. If I needed to further validate myself, I could share those reasons with anyone who would listen and they’d undoubtedly nod and agree, brows furrowed with concern for my evident distress, further affirming I was making the right choice.
Utter bullshit.
Not them, me.
After all, people can only respond to the information you give them, and I’ve been dishing up steaming piles of the good stuff for quite a while now.
This is not my first rodeo.
But this is the first time I’ve well and truly called myself out on my own bullshit.
So I did what one of my favourite writing/strengths coaches, Becca Syme would do, and questioned the premise:
Why did I feel ‘tired’? Because I hadn’t slept well. Also, the looming to-do list of the day felt like too much to face.
Was I actually tired, or was it something else? Yes, see above and, also, see above.
After a few more probing questions, it came down to one simple thing: overwhelm.
I’d had a rush of plans and ideas and now I was staring down at the enormity of trying to achieve them and it was giving me a giant wobble.
A bit of a reassessment had me postponing a couple of things and moving something else to later in the week, because none of it was all that time sensitive. I then spent 45 minutes on my manuscript - because that’s all the brain-power I had — and by the end of it all, I felt my enthusiasm returning.
I don’t know why I have to repeatedly learn this lesson, but the very act of doing something creative, makes me want to do something creative. The energy perpetuates itself. Which is good thing or a bad thing. It can be a rewarding cycle or a vicious circle; it all depends on how you look at it.
At the beginning of this most recent leg of my writerly journey, I thought I’d be digging into the whys and wherefores of my limiting beliefs and self-sabotage. I thought that if I thoroughly excavated them from the source, I could disarm them and be forever free of their influence.
Aw, bless. 😆
When you’re in constant conversation about why you’re stuck, you’ll embolden and embellish it. It will become the altar at which you’ll sacrifice your entire life experience. ~ Gary John Bishop
Oof. Yeah. Been there, done that. I may have an entire wardrobe full of souvenir t-shirts and am no further ahead for the effort.
It’s true, though, isn’t it? As unpleasant as it may be to hear. There comes a point when you have to stop examining the mess and start clearing it up. The only way out is through, and all that.
And the only way through is, in the words of Maggie Smith, to keep moving.
Do something.
Anything.
Like 45 minutes on your manuscript.
Or 15.
Or 5.2
Then letting the magic of creative inertia propel you forward.
It goes beyond wishful thinking and feel-good empowerment. It’s neurology and brain chemistry — do the rewarding thing and the reward will make it more likely you’ll do the thing again (ask a software developer how that works) until eventually you don’t even have to think twice about it. It becomes automatic. The caveat is that our neural pathways don’t pass judgement on which rewarding thing you do, so it behooves us to choose wisely.
My unhelpful thought patterns and behaviours are deeply ingrained in my brain — they’ve been thriving for years on the rich, fertile soil of my self-doubt and cleverly worded justifications. I know they’re not going away in a hurry; they will rear their smarmy heads just as soon as things get difficult or overwhelming or uncertain. But because I can predict them, I can, conceivably, prepare myself in advance to deal with them. When they inevitably stroll into my consciousness, I can engage with them, or I can hold up my hand, ask them to hold on a minute, and open my Scrivener document.
If they’re still there when I’m done, we can have a chat.
Obviously, there are plenty of valid reasons for actually taking a break — I’ve been through enough episodes of burn-out to be acutely aware of that. I am, however, learning to differentiate between when I legitimately need a break, or I’m just trying to find a way to give up. To counteract this confusion, I’m learning to incorporate regular breaks into my schedule so that I don’t wear myself down to a nub, thus necessitating a complete halt to progress.
As I’ll illustrate in a later piece, there are sometimes very valid reasons for simply not writing.
This: "There comes a point when you have to stop examining the mess and start clearing it up. The only way out is through, and all that. "
I need to print that out in BIG TYPE, print it a dozen times and hang it on every mirror, cupboard, the fridge and arrange for some sort of pop-up on my computer every half hour. Brilliant.
Throwing in the towel is the easy option which is, I am sure, why we chose that route. It is so much harder to carry on especially when there are voices of doubt shouting so loudly.
So glad to hear that you found a way through, I do hope that way gets easier as time goes on and it doesn't continue to feel like an insurmountable hurdle that has to be climbed each and every time. I also hope that writing about it has changed things in some way for you.
They say a problem shared is a problem halved, I find this to be true even when sharing is the hardest thing to do, oh the irony.