I woke up today, determined to write. I wanted to be sure that I didn’t let another day go by trying to feel up the hole with affirmations of “oh, I’ll get back to it tomorrow.”
No. Not doing that anymore.
The feeling of resistance has been so familiar these past couple of days away from writing. Resistance is always there, looming, waiting for us to say “no” to the flow of work, the desire of the self to put something new into the world. The “no” is the friction that skids us to a slow, painful crawl – a crawl that’s powered by the bargaining, the “ok, I’ll write TWO pieces tomorrow,” or the, “No, TOMORROW will be the day I publish. Not today.”
The skid makes abrasions on our resolve – our will to work. And the tiny cuts are just big enough for Resistance’s viral ass to creep in. Oh, it feels so good at first – numbing you, taking away the pressure of creating, the pain of not knowing immediately what to do or create. After all, if you do nothing, then you don’t even have to ask yourself, “is it good enough?” No more self review … Yay, right?!?!
Until one day, you roll out of the bliss, and the doubt is creeping back in. “Why didn’t you do any work? You couldn’t come up with a post for TWO days?! Well, you probably don’t really want this anyway….”
And I would take another hit of the good shit, resisting away with the busy work of my day job – the real primo assignments like cleaning out inboxes and making categorized to do lists. MMMMM … so satisfyingly “meh.”
No. Not doing that anymore.
If I had to choose – and, I do – I won’t choose not to feel.
That’s not living.
I’d rather be afraid that you don’t like my work, than not to work at all.
