Let me finish this one thing first
No I'm not scared
I stare blankly into an empty page. The cursor pulsing, prompting me to write something. Anything. I rub my eyes with the palms of my hands and tap my fingertips on my head, as if to jolt thoughts and words out from their hiding places in my brain.
I convince myself I cannot focus because of the things still left on my to-do list for the evening. Distracting me with their sense of urgency. How can I expect to “put iPad on charge” if my mind’s off gallivanting, writing away without a care in the world?
I put my pyjamas on. I strip and remake my bed. I recover from the ordeal of stripping and remaking my bed. I spend 10 minutes idle and out of action while I use my red light therapy mask. I pick at the skin around my nail beds. I do Wordle. I make dinner, I eat dinner, I digest dinner, I clean up dinner. I get distracted by the TV, I make a peppermint tea, and oh and of course, I put my iPad on charge.
I do everything apart from write.
I am in preparation mode. I am poised on the starting blocks, but I have come to a bit of a halt. I am in fact convinced that I can’t write because of the things on my to-do list. That is true. Not because of monotonous, routine, run-of-the-mill things tasks, but from all the decluttering I need to make in my brain and digitally.
I have hundreds of snippets of writing in notes desperate not to be forgotten. I have newsletters in my inbox I want to read from Substacks I’ve subscribed to going back way over a year. I have an ever-growing list of articles and essays begging to be read. For some reason, I cannot find a way to write freely until these certain things have been ticked off, done, completed.
I worry there will always be something next, something else to distract me and stop me from getting on with it. And here we’ve come full circle. Thinking yet again about conducive circumstances for writing.
Everything is threading together, in its own way. In ways I can’t fully see yet. In ways I am sort of aware of already and have been for a long time. In ways that are trying to reassure me that there is no wrong way only way.
So yes, maybe the reading lists and the unread emails are part of the blockers in creating a ‘conducive’ writing set-up. Perhaps the real underlying problem is that fear of failure is rearing its ugly head. It’s heard my plans for the year and it wants to self-sabotage. To keep me wrapped up nice and safely in the familiar and the known.
If I am to get anywhere, I must keep on going. If I can’t go over it (changing my bed) and I can’t go under it (putting my iPad on charge) I’ll have to go through it (finding any way necessary to get writing done).
