I’ve been thinking a lot about failure recently. I’m sure that when people look at my posts, what they see is something that looks like success, mostly because I’m a fairly positive person by nature, and I tend to frame things in that way, both in my head and on the page. But it’s only part of the story.
The biggest problem right now is writing — I have somehow built up HUGE, MASSIVE mental issues around writing, such that I sometimes go months without writing anything (other than these posts, which at least help me keep my hand in a bit?).
I have SO MANY books I want to write. Want very badly to write. Novels and series and YA and middle-grade and nonfiction and poetry, and time is just slipping away, day by day; it’s more than a bit maddening. In the last six months, I think the only time I managed to write was when I was on a plane or at a writing retreat.
I’m going to take another stab at smashing through that blockage next week, when Lori and I start meeting in the early morning to write — we’re going to try it for a week, see if it helps me. (Lori is already pretty disciplined about writing, but maybe it’ll help her too. 🙂 )
But it means that most days, my entire experience of the day is bracketed by failure. I wake up thinking ‘I should be writing,’ and then I go through the day, which is often pretty open schedule-wise, so that I COULD be writing much of the time, and then I can’t bring myself to write…
…so I do other things, productive things, and then I post about those, so it looks like I’m being productive all the time, but every time you see me posting a pretty art thing, know that there’s a voice in my head yelling at me that I should be writing instead. It’s just a productive form of somewhat pathological procrastination.
I basically have two main issues in my professional life right now, which are basically the same issue:
- I fail to write almost every day
- I end up compulsively working 14-16 hr days most days, I think mostly because I feel so miserable about not writing, which has negative consequences for my sanity, my health, and my personal relationships
So I look WILDLY productive, but it’s also very sucky in my head a lot of the time. Sigh.
Anyway, I don’t know if all of this is of interest to anyone other than me and my therapist, but there you are.
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PLAN FOR TODAY:
- send short story (that I wrote on plane / at writing retreat over Christmas) to workshop (DONE)
- take shelving unit down to store with Eliana and assemble (DONE)
- pull Christmas products from store and reorganize for January (DONE)
- wash and dry laundry (DONE)
- clean up exercise room (DONE)
- finish cleaning up and organizing main room in basement studio (VERY CLOSE TO DONE)
PUSHING TO TOMORROW:
- exercise
- call dealer about tire service for car; call AAA re: towing
- 9 a.m. — work with Eliana on getting stock in online shop
- review SLF Slack messages and catch up on tasks
- set up and post about Veganuary book promo
- look at schedule and if it works, schedule pressed flower demo at shop (probably end of January)
- look at schedule and schedule Tornado / Perennial party at shop — in February, my nine-year anniversary of the original cancer diagnosis is coming up, seems like a good time to celebrate the books coming out
- clear at least 50 e-mail messages (have been letting it pile up, sigh)
- work on syllabus prep (mostly involves reading fantasy short stories to finalize what I’m including this semester, so should be pleasant job)
- work on Russ essay
- figure out what other medical appointments everyone in the family needs in the next month, and schedule, sigh
- put away laundry
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(photo of part of the basement studio space that I spent time organizing yesterday — at least it’s more serene now, which does make it much easier to work — my ADHD means that clutter and chaos is wildly distracting, and I basically can’t work in it)
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