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| Found at quotefancy.com |
- a post by Jeanna Mason Stay
I've been in such a funk. This year started off wonderfully. I had a goal to write everyday. Maybe not a lot, but at least something. And for several months, I was doing great. Not perfect--I missed a couple of days--but really well.
And then, something hit. I'm still not sure what it was, and I'm definitely not over it yet. It's been like walking uphill through sludge. I just haven't cared. About much of anything, really. I've wondered, am I depressed? Am I just being lazy? What is wrong with me?
And the wonderful little checkmarks that I used to make to keep track of days I wrote ... They just tapered off. I haven't even looked at the tracking app I have for weeks. Just thinking about it makes me feel tense. Pretty much the entire month of August, a black hole of nothing.
But here I am again, trying to get back in the saddle. There are two really amazing anthology projects that I want to be involved in, but that takes actually, you know, writing. So I'm starting small, with a blog post about essentially nothing, and working up from there.
It's hard to start up again after you've lost all momentum. It's hard to feel like you're back at the beginning. But I recently read this statement from C. S. Lewis that I think sums it up:
"You can't go back and change the beginning, but you can start where you are and change the ending."
What do you all do when you feel like you're back at the beginning with no progress made? How do you get back up and start again?
When I get back into it, I try not to scare myself off--I ease in. I am not going to run a 5K race if I haven't ran in 6 months, and likewise with writing. I try to fill my bucket with things that bring me joy and creative energy -- good books, art, nature, favorite people. And then I let myself truly celebrate what I accomplish. Instead of thinking, I only wrote 250 words, and they aren't that great, I think --250 words that didn't exist, I pushed the story somewhere and tried new things, and I try to truly FEEL the goodness of it.
ReplyDeleteWhat great ideas. I love the idea of "filling the bucket" with things that bring you joy. Also, I'm definitely in the mode of celebrating any words at all.
DeleteThank you for your thoughts!