I don’t know how I do it. But sometimes I find myself making the easy shit super hard to do.
It’s not all aspects of my life. Making time for daily exercise and movement is easy for me, whereas I know it’s hard for others.
But writing. Fuck. God damn. I feel like it’s been fucking impossible to build it as a daily habit.
It’s as if I create a friction point in my brain. Something that I have to talk myself into. Or more often than not, talk myself out of adhering to a commitment that I’ve made to myself.
To procrastinate. To push it off. Or just avoid it altogether under the guise that I’m too busy.
And why? Because I want to avoid some short term discomfort. And I knowingly trade the short term avoidance for long term pain. Seriously! It’s stupid, but I fall victim to it more often than not.
And the amount of time, energy and anxiety created by avoiding doing the thing often adds up to more pain than the act of doing the thing itself. Foolish, I know.
It’s been this annoying pebble in my shoe. Something that grates on my sense of self. Something that feels like it’s eroding who I believe myself capable of being. Because when I lie to myself, when I break a promise that nobody else in the world knows about but me … it’s still a broken promise. It’s a failure to hold myself accountable.
Honestly, I found it so frustrating that it was one of the reasons that I started therapy in 2019. That’s right - it wasn’t a giant suppressed trauma that came to a head. There was no crippling relationship breakdown. No dehabilitating substance abuse or anxiety. I started therapy because I was annoyed that I was procrastinating my writing.
And I know that the only way out is through. No matter of systems, writing partners, dedicated writing time or whatever can get the words down on paper. It’s about the internal battle in my head. Winning that inner dialogue between the part of me that wants to create excuses to avoid writing, and the part of me that wants the results that a consistent writing practice provides.
To write through the discomfort. To hold myself accountable. To publish.
And I find it like running. The toughest part is not the act of running. It’s the distance of time between when I’ve made the decision to run and when I actually get out there and move my feet. That’s the time when my mind starts making excuses. Starts negotiating with myself to cut the run short or put it off for another day.
But the run - the actually act of running - is enjoyable. The endorphin hit that I get from walking through my front door good and sweaty comes with a feeling of accomplishment.
And it’s the same for writing. I fucking love the act of pounding the keyboard. Of letting a beautiful stream of consciousness out onto the page. Even the act of rewriting and editing - find that enjoyable.
But the moment before I start. That seems to be the hardest part.
- Christian