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heraldarosI'm very deeply worried that, once I go back to work, I won't have time and/or energy to write (hence the mad dash to get things written). The more rational part of me knows this is silly; I'll slow down, of course, but I regularly found time last year, and I was learning as I went at work, which took a lot of time and energy. Still, it's a hard worry to shake because there were whole years where I just did not write very much at all.
I have a lot of guilt/shame tied up in writing, so I try to avoid ultimatums like "I'm going to write for an hour every day!" or "I'll write for 100 words each day!" or even "I will write two days this week!" because I don't approach them rationally. Meaning, the first time I slip up, I instantly start spiraling into Depression Town, "I'm a terrible person, why did I ever think I could write, this will never work, if I can't handle this now how could I ever think I could handle *insert more stressful time of the year here*?" As I've gotten older and more cognizant of catastrophic thinking, I can usually tackle those thoughts the first time. But I never slip up just one time -- something else comes up, I have a really busy week, and then another one, and then I'm just tired one week, and the thoughts kind of slip in the back door, not quite so brazen.
"It's okay to just give up on that," they say this time. "It was asking too much. I knew that at the time, didn't I? There was no way it was ever gonna happen, so I can stop convincing myself it will. I gave it a try and it didn't work out. Too bad."
And, like, that's not exactly wrong, but the thing that's helped me the most in the last couple years has been to instead turn that on its head, and go "why didn't it work out? What got in my way? How can I adjust to do better next time?" Which works great! As long as I am not in Depression Town, where every other thought is a spare club I will use to beat myself without realizing it. (My default response to challenge has generally been shutdown since I was in high school, so it's a very entrenched pattern for me to try to break.)
All of this is a lot of words to say that I've now cleared 16k since the beginning of January (after getting ~27k in the LAST WEEK of December) and while I'm happy about that, I'm starting to get going-back-to-work anxiety re: writing. :/
I have a lot of guilt/shame tied up in writing, so I try to avoid ultimatums like "I'm going to write for an hour every day!" or "I'll write for 100 words each day!" or even "I will write two days this week!" because I don't approach them rationally. Meaning, the first time I slip up, I instantly start spiraling into Depression Town, "I'm a terrible person, why did I ever think I could write, this will never work, if I can't handle this now how could I ever think I could handle *insert more stressful time of the year here*?" As I've gotten older and more cognizant of catastrophic thinking, I can usually tackle those thoughts the first time. But I never slip up just one time -- something else comes up, I have a really busy week, and then another one, and then I'm just tired one week, and the thoughts kind of slip in the back door, not quite so brazen.
"It's okay to just give up on that," they say this time. "It was asking too much. I knew that at the time, didn't I? There was no way it was ever gonna happen, so I can stop convincing myself it will. I gave it a try and it didn't work out. Too bad."
And, like, that's not exactly wrong, but the thing that's helped me the most in the last couple years has been to instead turn that on its head, and go "why didn't it work out? What got in my way? How can I adjust to do better next time?" Which works great! As long as I am not in Depression Town, where every other thought is a spare club I will use to beat myself without realizing it. (My default response to challenge has generally been shutdown since I was in high school, so it's a very entrenched pattern for me to try to break.)
All of this is a lot of words to say that I've now cleared 16k since the beginning of January (after getting ~27k in the LAST WEEK of December) and while I'm happy about that, I'm starting to get going-back-to-work anxiety re: writing. :/
