Not what I planned
For over a week now, there’s been a family medical emergency going on and everything has been kind of turned upside down. I was planning on posting another creative writing process essay but that seems weird given what’s going on. And it would be weird. I mean, serious important life stuff is happening, yeah?
But, at the same time, I realized this might be a good opportunity to talk about one of the biggest obstacles I face when it comes to writing. Learning when NOT to write.
Here I am, sitting in a hospital waiting room drinking a lukewarm Diet Dr. Pepper and my anxiety is shouting at me,”You should be writing! Every day you don’t write you’re destroying your career! Your financial security! Your dreams!”
My anxiety is such an asshole.
No, not just an asshole - a narcissist. It only focuses on one thing, all the time, and that is: what am I not doing right now that I should be doing that if I don’t do it will ruin my entire life?
Nine times out of ten: that thing is writing.
This happen to anyone else?
I promise my priorities are in the right place - I mean, I’m here. I ate lunch in a cafeteria whose ‘Adventure’ section comprised of a burrito bowl yesterday and chicken marsala today. (Sidenote: I imagined earlier what it would have been like if Anthony Bourdain had done an episode of his show at this cafeteria and it provided me much amusement, helping me get over the fact there is no non-dairy milk here).
I am focused on the important stuff. Life stuff.
But, I’ll admit, I haven’t always been able to do that. My anxiety is SO LOUD - that I used to not be able to ignore it. It ran the show.
It reminds me of this scene from Night Shift - Michael Keaton’s first big movie role, I think - Michael Keaton would be my anxiety in this scenario. “This is Chuck to remind Bill to SHUT! UP!”
Last time I was in a hospital with my laptop for a decent amount of time, my anxiety was so freaking loud it made me write a pilot for a tv show.
Which was stupid. Obviously. My mind was elsewhere, and more importantly, my heart was elsewhere. I was just going through the motions, giving the anxiety what it wanted so it would shut up. The anxiety is always so short sighted - it made me write but ignored the fact that I’d never be able to write something good under those circumstances. In the end, that pilot ended up just being a bunch of words on a screen forming unremarkable sentences, overly familiar ideas.
Writing isn’t like a regular job - it’s not about the hours you clock or the boxes you check off. The usual measures of success don’t apply. Just because I typed on my laptop for two hours today doesn’t mean I now have two hours worth of genius material.
But try telling my anxiety that.