I have a short list of “musts” to accomplish this year. Beyond resolutions, these are items that regularly appear on my annual, semi-annual, quarterly, monthly, weekly, daily, and sometimes hourly lists. Points of procrastination, episodic yet perpetual.
Atop the list is a writing project, we’ll call it Project A. Getting to the point of actively “working on” Project A is itself an accomplishment made possible by identifying and overcoming barriers. Three to be exact. Project A has been in my head over 15 years, though initially I was unsure how or even whether to approach it.
In 2017 I created a dedicated space to organize material. In 2018 I successfully articulated the aforementioned barriers that, as constructed as they were, gave me permission to move forward. Throughout 2019, I haphazardly engaged with the material. Last year, I sought advice from a writer smarter, more disciplined, and may I add far more talented, than I. But by summer, my efforts had again fallen flat.
So why keep Project A on my To-Do List if it never gets done? Because I know I will eventually cross it off. I just have to figure out why I'm stuck... the possibilities are cliché.
Fear
Universal, relatable. Fear, in its enormity, begs to be unpacked. This allows me the luxury of making one, if not more, additional list(s).
Foremost, I should identify the fear. Failure? That’s a big one. Exposure? Vulnerability? To dig deeper, I should understand what’s causing my fear, parsing it further to understand the root of each type of fear. This is the point at which I get caught in a vortex of reason and logic that is neither reasonable nor logical.
Not to say that fear is not on a barrier because I know from internet self-therapy, popular psychology, numerous writing workshops, copious hours of reflection and seemingly endless introspection, fear can be a substantial and legitimate barrier. However, in this case it’s simply an excuse.
What else might be preventing me from accomplishing this allegedly interminable writing goal?
Time
Always a good one. There are only so many hours in the day. Not a viable excuse here because I’ve been known to overdraw sleep time to work on related, though not pointed, goals.
For instance, this past year I’ve dedicating a lot of time to writing, pushing pieces onto social media (a first), and spending late- or all-nighters writing -- even if that writing is random and noncommital. And there was that five-month furlough… so time is certainly not preventing me from achieving any writing goals.
Energy
Another good one. Working full-time at a job I don’t love is more exhausting than it should be. But even as an English adjunct, I was unable to make real traction writing. It actually felt like a bigger struggle then. Granted, I often had 75-100 students each semester, so while my time was relatively fluid, after the prepping, the performing, the reading, the responding… there was little fuel left to ignite my own fire, much less build one up. What little energy I had left for my writing was usually spent on personal emails, an outlet I, like many, have reluctantly accepted as a replacement for the handwritten letter.
Having exhausted the usual suspects: fear, time, and energy, as possible reasons for not crossing Project A off my To-Do List, I’m left with the now obvious – and who are we kidding? Always obvious – truth that an unwillingness to prioritize has kept me from achieving certain goals. Important goals. Achievable goals.
Step One: Admit you have a problem.
