Aspiring writer realizes she does household chores instead of actual writing

Friends exclaim, “Your house is always so clean! How do you do it!?”

I’m creative AF when it comes to avoiding things. For example! When it’s time to write, I’ll make the bed. When it’s time to write, I’ll start the laundry. When it’s time to write, I’ll run to the dump and drop off rotting food into the compost bins. 

I’m productive as hell, friends even tell me so because every time they come over they’re all like, your house is always so friggin clean! how do you do it? 

I don’t write, that’s how. 

I do a lot of other things. I’m in great shape because I workout instead of writing. I’ve leveled up my cooking game to the point that I’m whipping up shit without recipes because I cook instead of writing every day. My cats are spoiled rotten and love me and sleep on top of me because they can’t get enough of me—I play with them all day while I’m not writing.

I barely read too—a sin for any writer to admit. I’ve convinced myself I don’t have the time because that time is better spent writing. Except I do have this landslide of self-help books toppling off my bedside table as I attempt to self-help my way to understanding why I don’t write.

This doesn’t stop me from taking books out of the library like some book hoarder. I’ll walk around with a book, taking it from room to room, placing it in plain sight so I can pick it up when I “have a moment” only to renew the book three weeks later while also renewing my commitment to cracking it open and indulging in its contents. Eventually guilt wins and I pick up the book but just like a toddler who's gone limp in defiance, my eyes buckle under their own weight and 32 seconds later I’m napping.

I think I have reader narcolepsy. 

As you can tell, I stand before a great mountain. Wanting to be a writer and actually becoming one is proving to be my Battle Royale. And in any good battle, having a secret arsenal of weapons at your disposal is paramount. As the Universe would have it, my greatest tool came from my greatest resistance. A book. 

Obviously this is not just any book, but a magical book written by a very well-known author—who, like all great writers, suffers from uncertainty and the need for approval. Refreshing. I imagined all people who have achieved such a high level of status to look at life as if it’s a trip on the Polar Express—because how can you NOT be excited and thrilled and joyful and merry and full of zoomies when on the Polar Express? But she’s not. She’s not!!! She questions her work and seeks approval from editors, publishers, and mere mortals like me. She struggles… like meeeeeeeee!!! (Only difference is she writes.)

The book that hasn’t triggered my narcolepsy is a follow-up to the classic The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron—which I never read but now have the urge to dive into. This book is called Living the Artist’s Way - An Intuitive Path to Greater Creativity—which I bought off Amazon along with 17 other things I didn’t need—and I popped off to a cute little gathering hosted by a peppy mom who came up with the idea to create a two-hour workshop for the book.

Now I know the word “artist” will frighten off many people who believe they lack even one creative cell in their vast physical structure, but ye of little creative faith, this book is even for the C-level exec, the shoe-shiner, the person who shoves fliers in the faces of tourists in Times Square, the mom who raises her kids full time (or dad!). And here’s why: because this book only asks you to sit down and write about yourself. (God, I know, it sounds nightmarish and makes you want to balance your checkbook from 1987 instead but trust me when I tell you this—it’s eerie how writing about yourself gives you massive insight about yourself.)

Think about it, you have a lot going on in your mind and so many deep thoughts are hanging out at your internal water cooler just waiting for the chance to be seen and heard and asked, hey, so what’s been going on?

It’s an opportunity to discover what’s been holding you back from doing certain things. It’s (woo-time) about seeking guidance through writing. 

And it’s work. And it’s scary because it’s an honest look into what you’re doing with your life, and what you’re avoiding doing. That’s why I wrote down “Stop avoiding your writing” because that’s what came to me. Granted, I was all puffed up and appalled at first. How dare this guidance call me out? I do write. And then I quietly acquiesced to the fact that while I do write, I don’t do it in a way that works for me. I’m inconsistent and sporadic and that’s no way to achieve achievements. Just like wanting to workout but not doing it. Wanting to paint but not buying any paint. Wanting to learn a new language, but not practicing. Wanting to change jobs but believing it’s too late. 

We all avoid certain things we know we’d feel better in the having of, in the achieving of, but WE’RE SCARED! We believe in the fear more than in our ability to achieve. 🙋🏻‍♀️ We’ve become afraid of the work because it feels kinda icky and weird to do something abnormal, like sit down and write about ourselves while waiting for some magical force to speak to us. I get it, super weird.

But once you realize everything you do is to generate a feeling—good or bad—to satisfy some part of you, you begin to see the level of control you possess. Sometimes avoiding is protecting the familiar parts of life, the familiar feelings you’ve always felt and stopped questioning long ago. This book is helping me to stop supporting the familiarity of a clean house and start supporting the unfamiliar uncertainty that comes with writing in public every day.

And as a courtesy FYI, when you begin supporting uncertainty, you’re going to begin to feel all sorts of unease, but that’s OK! Sit with it. Feel uncomfortable with it until you’re able to say to yourself, aw hell with it, I’m just gonna sit and write! That’s a good moment.

After three weeks of working my way through this book, I’m able to let the words flow onto the page and they’re real and honest and call me out to play, and isn’t that what we need? To go out and play instead of calculating the pros and cons of every risk? That’s how days slip away from us.

Yes, I avoid writing because I’m scared. Plain and simple. Now that I see that, will you please take my broom and my Lysol and all my sponges because I have some serious writing to get to.

Follow uncertainty. Follow the unfamiliar. Live a richer life.

Until next week my bold asker-of-questions friend!

❤️
am