Blahg Blahg Blahg
I didn’t publish a blog post last week. Work was great, but I was feeling the accumulated effect of other stresses in my life and when Thursday evening came around, I went to bed early instead of writing a post. I figured I would post something by Sunday at the latest, because I’ve done that before when I didn’t feel like I had the energy to meet my self-imposed Thursday deadline.
Then it was the weekend and I slept through a lot of it, spent some time planting and watering and pruning the shrubs and trees around my house to relax, and zoned out reading books. Then on Sunday night instead of writing a blog post I started laying out a poetry manuscript for a chapbook contest that is ending soon. I stayed up way too late, until 3AM, sorting through my poems and formatting them into a 6 x 9 inch word document. Didn’t finish the chapbook and didn’t even attempt a blog post.
Monday I was exhausted, of course, and went to bed early again. And today I rushed from one meeting to the next and to appointments after work and got in bed at 8:30PM for another early night. I read through my emails on my smartphone to make sure I didn’t miss anything important before going to sleep, and read this:
“What I Do When I Feel Like Giving Up”, by James Clear. It starts off with “I’m struggling today. If you’ve ever struggled to be consistent with something you care about, maybe my struggle will resonate with you too.” And then he goes on to write about how he’s consistently posted on his blog twice a week since November 2012.
Dammit, James.
I was ready to push off the guilty, nagging feeling I had about not blogging and prioritize my rest. Until I read his damn post. The entire article was about how he didn’t feel like writing that day and how he motivated himself to do it anyway.
Dammit, James!
So now I’m out of bed, at my desk writing this post, which I could have written last Thursday or any day since then but didn’t, until James put it in my face that it is my choice and that there are methods of motivating ourselves even when we feel like giving up. Even when we are convinced our reasons for not writing (or whatever) are rationale, and even when we are this close to tuning out and distracting ourselves.
I’ve even blogged about this topic before and could have taken my own advice. But I didn’t. I let my habit slide and now I’m putting in the effort to get back on schedule. It is a choice, and I could stop blogging or only blog when I feel inspired. My truth is that I do care about writing consistently and sharing what I’ve learned about meaningful work.
So thanks, James. And dammit.
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