I’m writing this email, which will arrive in your inbox on Monday the 11th, on the evening of Friday the 8th during my Create-Along livestream. (I’m trying to get better at doing things ahead of time!)
So far, this week has been… well. Not fantastic. On Monday and Tuesday, I had a sinus thing where my head felt like it was exploding and my limbs felt like molten lead. On Tuesday evening, I started to feel better, and got myself ready for “the mother of all writing days” on Wednesday.
And then on Wednesday, a bunch of white supremacists overran the U.S. Capitol. Suffice to say I did not get the writing done that I wanted to do that day, either.
On Thursday I had back-to-back interviews and phone calls, and by the time evening rolled in, I was too brain dead to write thoughtfully (so I streamed “Stardew Valley” over on Twitch instead).
Now it’s Friday. I got up at 5:30 a.m. to write, went for a walk in the snow, and did all of the things that I had intended to do earlier in the week — but it still doesn’t feel like enough.
That is to say, I feel like I could have — “should have” — done more. “Should have” pushed through the resistance, the shock, the sinus pain and lethargy.
But whose “should” is that?
And what’s the difference between a reason and an excuse?
I know, intellectually, that I am always “enough”, and that my productivity does not equal my worth as a human being. I know that I did my best with what I had available during the time that I was given. As Gandalf says so beautifully in J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Fellowship of the Ring, “All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”
But did I make the best and most satisfying choices? Am I allowed to feel angry or guilty for getting sick? Or for living in “unprecedented times”?
It all gets so confusing and muddled, especially when we factor in expectation and comparison. Every day that I wasn’t able to do that day’s writing, I pushed that expectation to the next day. So on Monday, I figured that I could get my writing for Monday and Tuesday done on Tuesday. On Wednesday, I figured I could get my writing for Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday done on that day. By Friday, I had five days’ worth of writing to do — which at that point was unrealistic. Even after doing my writing for Friday on Friday (and more), I felt unsatisfied, like I hadn’t been productive “enough”.
Then there’s the comparison — when we compare ourselves to what we perceive others as accomplishing. Authors A, B, and C are writing 2k, 5k, and 7k words a day, respectively. They seem to manage to churn out those words rain or shine, regardless of Covid, depression, anxiety, or the 24 hour news cycle.
But I’m not Author A, B, or C. And, as far as I’m aware, neither are you. I’m Sarah. And you’re you. And we’re each moving forward as best we can in our own individual journeys. And besides, we never know what another person (or writer) is doing or dealing with beyond what we simply perceive about them.
Deciding to rest, deciding to heal, deciding to take some time to process the unrest in our local and global communities is not bad. It doesn’t mean you’re not a writer, or that you’re not “enough”. It means you’re human. It means I’m human. And we’re doing the best we can with what we have and where we are right now.
Our worth as humans is not based on what or how much we produce. I have to remind myself of this often. Sometimes we have days, weeks, months, or entire seasons where circumstances overrun our best intentions to write, create, and produce.
And that’s okay. It’s all part of our journey. It’s all part of life. What matters is that, when the next opportunity comes to create, we create, and we forgive ourselves if we can’t.
Words & warmth,
Sarah