This site isn't the only place where I write. As I talked about last time, I wanted to start to book reviews. Something, that I just realized, I haven't done for a week - maybe I should get on that. No matter, I am not going to 'should on myself', the book reviews will come with time. I journal, my own little personal way of dealing with things that isn't blogging, reviewing, poetry or formal academic writing. While I was doing my morning journal - I write one twice a day. I feel like it is a great way to bookend your day. I write down my intentions for at the start, and then close the day with what happened and the things that I am grateful for. With that little segue, let's get back to the topic, which I guess I alluded to with this notion of 'shoulding' on myself. A little phrase that I say when I am getting caught in a too critical mood when I haven't done anything or been productive. It is easy to get caught in traps - self-doubt, negativity, and the one I fall into time and time again, the 'all or nothings'. Black and white thinking is not just symptomatic of anxiety or mood disorders, everyone has had these thoughts from time to time, in varying severity. Not to diminish those of us who quite literally struggle day to day with this thinking. Getting trapped in the endless cycle - if I can't take the bus, I can't go anywhere; if I can't control my need for sweets, I can't have any kind of sugar and so on. I have experienced these all or nothing traps at points in my life, however, I want to talk about the notion of when we get stuck on one aspect of a project, we run into a road block, and then that means the project is halted and can't possible progress. I had this realization this morning while I was attempting to fall back to sleep. I realized that in order to make something happen, I have to push this aside, and more forward.
This might seem like a simple thing for some, however, for me, this is a challenge. I am the kind of person that has trouble jumping around in construction of a writing project. I can't jump around, I have to go from one chapter to the next, one chunk of it most be completed, in the order that it was intended and then I have to more onto the next section. And if this can't happen, I feel like I have hit a brick wall, and all is hopeless. This is the all or nothing, black and white thinking that has gotten my only so far in my academic book and with my business. If I could just get more money, if I could just have access to that database, that article, then I can move forward, then I can progress along in the project. I have seemed to have slightly gotten over the first, resolving myself to realizing, no, I actually need to go back to work and get money saved and invest in my business. However, the book is completely another story. For this last four years, off and on, I have been attempting to put my academic life's work together into one book. It would probably been easier to try and publish each essay separately; we have already talked about how I am an all or nothing kind of person, this book is no exception to that. But I realized today that this is never going to get off the ground unless I simply face these feelings and work through them. All or nothing thinking stems from fear, fear of the unknown and mostly the unknown outcome. I don't know if the chapter that I am stuck on will every be written, so it might as well stay unwritten, and then I won't be disappointed. The disappointment is already there, I am disappointed in myself for not working through these fears. Let the spiraling begin.
Getting out this spiral isn't easy. It takes that first step out of the pit labyrinth and then another, until you are out. Slipping will occur, I know it will, I have to keep trying. I decided to put the chapter aside and move onto another. There is plenty more work that needs to be done, and I am not saying that this won't stop my all or nothing, black or white thinking. Though, it's a start.
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