Hoist Yourself Back Into That Saddle
Since it has been a while since I’ve written anything here, I figured I should come clean with a post about procrastination. Or not procrastination, exactly, but losing your rhythm. It is one of the most frustrating, least constructive patterns in my life.
To illustrate, let me tell you what has happened with this blog. As you know, if you’ve been reading, my husband and I have been in the throes of making a big decision. We’ve been a little busy. So it has been harder than usual to find time to write. Also, my brain has been occupied with gnawing on the various pieces of this decision, and not with the usual random assortment of thoughts that I like to share with you. Some of the issues at play in our decision-making are probably of broader interest, but after a while I figured you’d get tired of hearing about my angst. (After a while, I got tired of it myself.) And because the decision has involved some delicate negotiations, I have not felt free to share all of my musings with the big wide world.
The upshot of all of this is that I stopped writing. And immediately started feeling guilty. (I have literally had “blog” on my to-do list for weeks now.) The longer I waited, the worse I felt, until I didn’t even want to think about blogging because it instantly conjured up all these feelings of failure and regret and frustration. Sitting down to write a post stopped being fun, and started to feel like this miserable, looming chore.
But the truth is, of course, that writing a post is as simple and pleasant as it has always been—as I remembered the instant I sat down at the keyboard just now. The hard part was getting over the emotional barrier that I created when I lost my rhythm.
Writer’s block is a well-known phenomenon, but I notice this pattern in just about every arena of my life. I miss a call from a friend I haven’t talked with in a while, and for whatever reason, don’t return the call right away. And then I spend weeks with “call friend” on my mental list, but feel increasingly sheepish about the delay, and decreasingly likely to just pick up the phone. Or I get in a good exercise routine, but then miss a few days, and a few more, and pretty soon I have to start all over again, convincing myself that I really am the kind of person who exercises and that I should just lace up my shoes and go.
In every instance, resuming the lost routine is much easier in practice than it is in my imagination. In fact, it is usually instantly satisfying because it removes the whole mess of guilt I’ve been carrying around. The frustrating part is that although I am fully aware of this pattern, and recognize it as it is happening, I still succumb to it more often than I would care to admit.
What do you do when you lose your stride…in your work, your hobbies, your relationships? Any tricks for getting back in the saddle more gracefully?
good to see you back. I kept checking my RSS feed for a new posting!
Blogging should be either 1) work related or 2) fun diversion. If the former, then absolutely it should be on your “to do” list. If the later, it should NEVER be on your “to do” list – it should be done as you feel the muse speaking. It should never be something you feel you SHOULD or MUST do. That defeats the whole point of it being a fun diversion!
I have 2 blogs – one work and one play. The play one is updated at least every other day, usually daily, sometimes multiple times per day. The work one — well, my goal was one new post every month. The first 3 months went well!
Hmmm… Interesting. I would say my blog treads right on that line between professional and personal, and my feelings about it are similarly mixed. I enjoy it a lot, but do have some expectations for myself about it, and am bummed when I don’t meet them.
A lot of things that I count as “fun diversions” still take some gumption and discipline. Maybe the problem is that I have a fickle muse. Even something like meeting a friend for lunch or getting out for a hike in the woods can feel more like obligation than impulse in the moment, but I’m always glad I did it!
I have learned, over a long, looonnng time, to live in the moment. If I don’t feel like doing something, I don’t do it. If I do feel like doing something, I do it. And I try not to, and am mostly able not to, doubt my action or inaction. So the dust balls and cat hair piles build up, the garden is permanently unkempt, but the crossword puzzle is done every day, and my family laughs together at least once a day.