All hale the master procrastinator
Perfectionist paralysis, writer's block... f. off!
Sooooo annoying. It’s just shy of a year since I stopped publishing (on Substack), and all but stopped writing.
I woke up one day, went to write… nothing… I tried, oh how I tried, but it ended up a donut day.
“That’s ok”, I told myself, “it’s just one day.”
Fine, until one became two, and two became three hundred and fifty-four.
I came back from time to time to try again, but nothing. My writing had gone into an involuntary hiatus.
I started writing a few weeks before my daughter was born. Today she is 18 months old. So I wrote for about a third of her life, then life got in the way. That makes sense somehow. Babies will do that.
It wasn’t just life getting in the way though. I started to make excuses:
“I don’t have time”
“I’m too distracted”
“The cover image takes too long”
“I have no ideas to write about”
So on, so forth, ya-di ya-di, ya…
In reality, I got in my own way as I:
Didn’t make time
Didn’t set up my environment to minimise distractions
Worried about things that didn’t really matter
Didn’t note down ideas when they came randomly during the day
Adding it all up, I was procrastinating.
But why?
Well, here’s the real reason: I started to worry about what readers would think.
All 42 of you (actually, it was more like 35 at the time… somehow I’ve gained subscribers without doing anything — nice!).
Does it really matter what 35 people think? No. No it does not.
Worrying about it stifled me.
That’s not to say I don’t care about those 35 (or 42) people, I do.
You can care about someone and not be worried about what they think about something.
What I think and write is for me. No one has to like it, I don’t even have to like it!
Fortunately, some of you do like it and have told me so. Thankyou!!
Worrying too much about what others will think is a thing for me; it’s plagued my whole life. People pleasing. What Jordan Peterson, love him or hate him, calls being ‘too agreeable’. It leads to burnout, depression, anxiety… mental breakdown (been there too, don’t recommend it).
It’s kept me in jobs I didn’t want to be in anymore, ‘friendships’ I didn’t enjoy, caused countless hangovers, and even stifled my progress in stand-up comedy.
So there I was, sacrificing writing because I worried too much about what others would think. If they ‘agree’ with me or not.
But what’s more important is to express one’s self. Fully, honestly, freely… and to make no excuses for doing so.
So today, on this 354th day of involuntary hiatus, I’m stopping it.
I’m publishing this raw and unpolished POS.
Or maybe it’s a masterpiece... who knows, who cares!
In summary: People pleasing isn’t pleasing, and excuses will ruin you. Stop it.
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Cover image: Generated on Substack using prompt “Procrastinating with a doughnut”
Glad to see you back! I know all about writing hiatuses, been there too many times and not proud. I think the toughest part is the act of starting again. It takes vulnerability. The voice in my head says, "What if you stop again? That will be embarrassing!" And I guess that's the part of me that worries about what people think.