The past few weeks, a deadline has loomed in my home, like a big elephant that none of us can walk around. The deadline has kept me from feeling good about any JOY that did not serve IT.
Right now I am writing peacefully on this blog with no interruptions from the gremlin on my computer that causes it to freeze up when I least expect it. This past two days, whenever I got most serious about my deadline, my computer was crashing as soon as I made any significant progress on my article.
This is the third year that Augusta Magazine has asked me to take on an assignment that would otherwise be a challenge to execute from their home city. Three years now I have gotten to take visitors around the Lake Oconee area in my "story".
This is the second year that the gremlin has courted me during the peak part of production. And with laryngitis striking me just as I was attempting last-minute interviews, this is second year that sickness added something besides sheer enthusiasm as a motivator. Now, it is as if I have a mountain to overcome to get to the goal, and not simply an "assignment". Is there something in the pattern that I can learn from?
It is important for me today, to really GET that I have done a heroic job this year and last. I actually done something I normally love, under duress, where I could not trust my tools and could not listen to my body. What more do I have to prove?
I think my near depression of today is a let-down from anxiety-produced motivation. There isn't much left in my emotional bank account when technology and a bad cold intensify the hard and serious work of writing an assigned article.
Tonight, may rest come well and truly feel well-deserved.
May I consider strongly this audacious thought: that maybe for me to be a truly responsible writer I need to avoid deadlines.
Zena
What EA Is...and Is Not
10 years ago
6 comments:
couldn't help but notice the question of "what more to prove" and think and to whom? Wondering where these questions arise in me? And the deadline or no deadline and what would I ever do if my anxiety left - would there be no motivation in my tool box? feeling curious - but it's bedtime - night - night - my friend
"It is important for me today, to really GET that I have done a heroic job this year and last. I actually done something I normally love, under duress, where I could not trust my tools and could not listen to my body. What more do I have to prove?"
J, I know you are responding to the above passage.
When I have a deadline and a person awaiting my work, and I don't know my audience personally (they are in a magazine), I feel fear and responsibility and that I am having to prove the worth of what I do.
When I am given sickness and even have to lose my actual voice, and witness myself perservering towards a deadline despite the obstacles...
my heart cries out, "What more do I have to prove?"
And as you said, of anxiety.. I saw clearly, in my sickness, how the anxiety I use to motivate me was NOT my friend.
Deadlines bring up my anxiety. How much I want to unhook from that and just love what I do as a writer.
And write from a place of loving ME, not fearing that I won't be enough, I won't be enough... I won't be enough.
"It is important for me today, to really GET that I have done a heroic job this year and last. I actually done something I normally love, under duress, where I could not trust my tools and could not listen to my body. What more do I have to prove?"
J, I know you are responding to the above passage.
When I have a deadline and a person awaiting my work, and I don't know my audience personally (they are in a magazine), I feel fear and responsibility and that I am having to prove the worth of what I do.
When I am given sickness and even have to lose my actual voice, and witness myself perservering towards a deadline despite the obstacles...
my heart cries out, "What more do I have to prove?"
And as you said, of anxiety.. I saw clearly, in my sickness, how the anxiety I use to motivate me was NOT my friend.
Deadlines bring up my anxiety. How much I want to unhook from that and just love what I do as a writer.
And write from a place of loving ME, not fearing that I won't be enough, I won't be enough... I won't be enough.
I love that wish and longing -
"just love what I do as a writer" -
now that would be the place to live!
I was thinking more about deadlines and I realize that other's deadlines make it feel impossible but my own make me feel powerful. Smiles
"And write from a place of loving ME, not fearing that I won't be enough, I won't be enough... I won't be enough."
I see this line and imagine the day the writer will pen "And write from a place of loving ME, not fearing, knowing that I am enough, I am enough, I am." because for me you always are - hugs Jane
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