Since officially relinquishing myself from perpetual
blogging back in January of this year, my hopes for the writing break completely
backfired. I thought taking my focus off of coming up with Blog material would
give me the brainpower I needed to properly construct the longer stories I was
writing in my spare time. I never make New Year’s resolutions (why bother?) but
I told myself I was going to work on chapters this year, not blurbs or quotes
or gobbets. Since rearranging my habits to promote writing productivity I wrote
less this year than I have the last six years of haphazardly sitting to write
when I felt like it.
It’s very hard for me to sit and write now. My brain doesn’t
dance across the letters like a ballerina, like it used to. That’s my mental picture
of writing and how I know when things sound ok. I watch her tip-toe, twirl, and
leap from word to word while I read and if she stops or stumbles, I come to and
really look at the words and figure out what needs changing. (That’s not weird,
right?) These days my brain has a surefooted and heavy-set government worker,
stomping across my letters in corrective shoes. She knows what she’s doing but
there’s no delicate nonsense. This year I am not cutting back on my writing. In
fact I’m going to set fake goals to write often, daily like I used to, before I
thought not writing as much would help my writing. I need my bouncing subtitles
icon to morph back into a lady worthy of Swan Lake.
What I found even more interesting than losing a bit of my
writing ability is what happened to my brain. I like to think I’m an observant
gal and I sure do enjoy ruminating. But since I went “off duty” my brain
stopped looking for blog material. I stopped reading scenarios as carefully and
analyzing my own reactions to things. I noticed this right away and at
first it was relaxing. I didn’t need to remember these story-worthy moments
because I wasn’t going to be writing a story. But I have not enjoyed being less
observant. Being unaware of what’s going on around me has left me feeling less
creative and less understood. Perhaps my main motivation to write more should
be that I will live my life with my eyes much more open than they are when I’m
not planning to write.
I was super frustrated at this time last year and decided to
restructure things in an effort to find peace. I’ve never been the type to make
goals or have actual obtainable dreams (a summer home in Italy anyone?).
Instead of making any progress on what I set out to do, a whole new world of
ideas and opportunities floated up to the surface due to my own strategic
avoidance of my “goals” and frustrations at sidestepping that to-do list. So now I have solid evidence that making plans means and guarantees nothing. Self-awareness and self-discipline are much more effective tools than plan-making. Write that down, kids. (Keep in mind this is coming from someone without an ounce of self-discipline but my self-awareness keeps me informed on these things.) Also this is really more for inner-peace and your own search for happiness. Workplace goals and business for The Man require lots of plan-making. There's a time and place, kids. Write that down too.
In short, because I have no self-discipline, I avoided my writing goals and spent more time on other things and the more time I spent on other things, the more I realized lots of really new things and my thinking was consumed with new ideas which, when mixed with immense frustration, led to barreling forward on a near-whim plan, in a fashion I would normally not entertain. (That's Lux, by the way. The near-whim plan. (There was some plan-making involved.)) So maybe my writing plan only half backfired. I definitely did not write as much (or at all really) but avoiding the writing gave me time to come up with a different way to make me happy and that's all I really wanted in the first place.
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