I want to write this while I still feel it. I want to blister my way through it and have it done without being overly critical or losing too much momentum. (Losing a sense of personal momentum is often the reason that some blog posts remain forever drafts.)
I decided recently that I would post four blog posts a week at JohnLacey.com. The thing about that this week is that I didn’t want to do it. I felt such amazing resistance to doing it. I couldn’t think of anything I didn’t want to do more than that. But here’s the really curious thing – the blog posts were all but done. I added a line to each of the two posts remaining, added some tags and hit the publish button and they were done. And I think they were great blog entries. I can’t for the life of me understand why I procrastinated over doing them for four days. It makes no sense.
Today I made a video and it was amazing – the process of creating it, I mean. I felt really good while I was creating it. I got caught up in the process and lost all track of time. It was a lovely sensation. But once it was finished and uploaded, I sat around anxiously, reluctant to start anything else. I had produced this thing and it seemed I was waiting for some feedback. I wasn’t taking a break or resting on my laurels, I was actively protesting against the part of me that wanted to create something more, something else. And the point I would like to make here is that it feels horrible because you feel torn. There is a part of you that wants to make something else but it is fighting with another part of you that is scared, and you’re very conscious of this inner conflict and it fuels its own extra source of anxiety.
It seems as though I spend half my time creating stuff and half my time resisting creating things, feeling awful about not creating things. I think it has finally dawned on me what it means when writers talking about needing to write every day. I think I finally understand the benefits of having a new project lined up before you finish your existing one. It is just too easy to get bogged down in rationalising things when you’re not creating things, it just becomes so easy to get lost in all those unarticulated fears and existential angst.
And when you’re really in the flow of creating something that means something to you, it’s truly magical. Because when it happens you really have to take a deep breath and think, “I put this off for four days? What the hell was I thinking? THIS is amazing!”
The trick of course is taking all these understandings and boiling them down into a set of practices, really working them into my life so that I follow up on things even when I don’t feel like it. That’s the next step, I suppose.
