Slaying the Inner Beast (Part I): learning to see success
Do
you ever feel like you totally butchered your use of time? Have you looked at
your daily or weekly goals and seen them still unfinished? Maybe several weeks
after they were supposed to be done? And the worst part of it was that you see pockets
of time that you could’ve used for those goals, and you chose to do something
less important?
Another
week has slipped by, and I’ve hardly done any writing. Because I blog and
schedule posts several weeks out, last week happened to be the Friday that Freedom From Discipline published. The week of
and the ones leading up to that post’s release were tough.
I
admit I felt
hypocritical. I’d quit my weekly
poem writing; I got behind on writing a few posts; and I’ve hardly touched my fantasy for
revisions in over a month. There were a couple of non-writing areas that I
slipped up on too. Some discipline, huh?
Instead
of knocking out more blog posts or revisions this weekend (like I planned)
while recovering from oral surgery, I watched videos, spent too much time
online, and wrote a random scene entitled Roake
that I may or may not use in a larger project in the future.
Looking
back over the past month, I see a lot of time wasted. I see unfinished
projects. I see failed goals. Yeah, I feel guilty.
In
the middle of that goopy mess, my friend shot me a text, asking what I was up
to. I told her I was trying to talk myself into working on revisions. Then she
said, “It’s okay to take a break. You’ve been writing a lot lately.”
Huh…I
guess so?
I
responded with, “Yeah, I need to remind myself it’s okay to not write all the time.”
As
if to confirm my half-believed response, an email from Ruth Soukup landed
in my inbox a bit later. She talked about realizing that we may not always reach our goals.
Sometimes there’s not enough time to meet all the deadlines. That’s
okay.
And
it is. It’s okay to have more to your life than black squiggles on a white
computer screen. It’s okay to not be a beast.
Besides,
I’d failed to keep in sight that part of the reason I had quit everything was so that I would have time
to write Mute, a mystery short story
for a contest. I wrote most of the story in six days. That’s a win, right?
I
just needed to get back into the groove of adding all my “regular commitments”
back in, once I finished Mute.
Because I got so focused
on what I wasn’t doing, I forgot what I did do.
True,
I did choose to waste my more than once. I could’ve done better with that. But
then, looking over Freedom From Discipline after it’s release, I talked about being okay
with failure. Just get up and go again. That’s all I can do. I’m not a slave to
discipline. It’s a choice. Sometimes I just need to read what I preach to y’all.
And
even now, when I don’t feel like I’m doing anything, I can look back on myself
at this time last year and see that I’m a different person now. Today already,
I’ve done several tasks that would’ve seemed momentous and burdensome last year.
Today I did them without a second thought, and I feel like, “I haven’t done
anything that I need to.” I’ve forgotten that what I can do without a problem
now were huge hurdles last year. I’ve grown. I’ve succeeded.
Discipline
is great. But if
you let it become a beast, a legalistic monster, it will eat you from the
inside out. If you feel like
you’ve wasted time with deliberate bad choices, well…I’ve done it too. It’s
time to do what needs to be done. If you feel like you’ve worked hard, but you
can’t get on top of everything, remember it’s okay. Turn back to see what you have done. Good job. I’m proud of you for your success.
…
Don’t become so focused on what you’re
not doing that it blinds you to what you have done.
…
Comments
Post a Comment