procrastination + perfection = distraction
My journey from pen to paper to typed, grammatically perfect, succinct and impactful literature has led me to this moment of deep contemplation. I'm challenging myself to freely write this post, unedited, unplanned, and completely spontaneous. And what a challenge it is!
While I love having a piece that sings literary excellence (and I wonder if that thought makes sense to anyone but me), I love the freedom of expressing joyFULLY in the moment whatever it is that is on my mind. I have a very active imagination and thoughts are always dancing around in my mind, ready to ride a wave of conscious awareness, pure potential ready to manifest in the physical realm. I live in this space for much of my time and for this reason, I find myself more in contemplation and less in action. One of the actions I am committing to is sharing through written word and the more I contemplate, the deeper I get into my thoughts and the less I spend here on planet earth doing something with my creative gifts.
This combination of the dreamworld I create in my mind that has endless places I can wander paired with my desire to share my creative gifts in such a perfect way distracts me from doing. The doing in the sense of sharing creative thoughts is so much less mandatory than the doing of tasks that simply need doing. Tasks such as chores, work, wellness needs. I wonder. I wonder why I give priority to items on a checklist and yet my own unbridled joy takes a backseat. Very curious. The distractions of these every day tasks + getting lost in my mind + my commitment to continuous growth has me stalled. What does one do when their car stalls? Turn the key in the ignition. And go.
Looking at the date of my last post, I know I have not been lazy. What happens on the surface is an indication of something else happening underneath. I am busy making myself busy because I am afraid to write. I am afraid not of what you, the beautiful being reading this will think. I am afraid of my own inner critic. I am afraid that I will not come close to reaching my ridiculous standards that I hold only myself to. I am also afraid because what I have to say, once it's on paper, in a sense, becomes immortal. I love having the freedom to change my mind and sometimes it scares me how fiercely I commit to my own words. I can rip up a piece of paper I don't like...
How can I reframe this for myself? How can I change my own wild mind?
What I am learning as I continue to navigate human experience in this iteration of my being is that I actually love the accountability that comes along with putting something into the digital stratosphere. Simultaneously, it scares me. Sometimes, I so desperately need to understand things and have a clear plan and know the exact chronology of events to unfold that I live life like a checklist. I learned how to do this to navigate stress, using logic strategically so I don't have to think creatively. Having come out of a stressful relationship a few years ago that I do need to declare was stressful for us both, there are remnants of my survivalist tendencies popping up where I least expect. There's absolutely no need to "survive" my creativity; treating creativity like a checklist only stagnates it. My reframe is the title of a book by Susan Jeffers that I read years ago: "Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway."
My wild mind needs to understand that fear in the realm of creative expression is there to alert me that I am:
on the verge of a breakthrough/lesson/learning
on the brink of having a new experience
unlocking something I am ready to release
procrastinating, seeking perfection
ready to identify my distractions
resisting and it's time to surrender and flow
In my mind, procrastination and perfection = distraction. This is how I do not share my light with the world.
How are you not sharing your light with the world and what is 1 small thing you can do to change that?
What prevents you from creative expression?
How can you dig in and reframe that for yourself?
What's one thing you can do today to express yourself creatively?
I love taking something that seems like a very clear concept, like the idea of writer's block, and peeking underneath. There's a universe of possibilities within everything we think and I often get lost in the spiralling, fractal, infinite tunnels that live within my own mind. It's easy to be in this space. It's challenging to step outside of where it's comfortable, in the space of dreams, and it is in this space outside that comfort zone where we discover our opportunities to grow and bring new possibilities to life.
Life is not black and white. Writer's Block cannot be chalked up to the simple equation of procrastination + perfection = distraction, little to no productivity, laziness or anything else that can be summed up in a word. Just like everything else in my life, I need to experience one extreme in order to understand the other and then I'll venture in and discover the space that lies between. That is where the magic will happen, and that is where I'm headed next.
