The
title I’ve chosen for today’s entry is a bit of an overstatement, since I’ve
continued to move forward with my writing. But today was one of those days that
tested my resolve to do any writing at all. My mood was vastly different this
morning than from what it had been on Friday and Saturday morning. Instead of
feeling exhilarated for having made some significant progress on how I am
approaching the practice of translation in my texts, I’ve begun feeling anxious about where
I am at and where I think I should be. This feeling began creeping in on Sunday
morning. By the evening, I started to feel downright panicky.
I
tried working through these feelings of anxiety and panic in my first writing
session this morning. I think part of the reason for such a mood swing says
something about my personality. As soon as I start feeling great about
something, I tend to find a reason to sabotage myself. I felt guilty for having
such a good time with friends on Saturday night (my day off), and I was not productive on
Sunday (not a day off) because I felt like I still needed to recharge. On top of that, I
realized as I continued to write this AM that I set myself up for these
feelings by focusing on all of the tasks I want to accomplish today AND this
month rather than on approaching each task individually. When I am going to
turn in a chapter, I ask myself? How much more writing to do have to do before
I get there? How many more close readings? How much more research on all of the
questions I’ve come up with in those close readings? When and I going to find
time to do all of that plus all of the other stuff I have to take care of on a
daily basis? It’s not that surprising then, given the amount of work that I’ve
been telling myself I have to do--not just in the short term but also in the
foreseeable future--that I felt overwhelmed and stressed. Putting all of that
on my shoulders inevitably leads to an amount of uncertainty.
My
natural inclination when feeling overwhelmed is to flee. In this case, fleeing
my responsibilities would mean not being productive. It would mean not writing.
I know well enough at this point, however, that flight solves nothing. When I
have avoided writing, my feelings of anxiety and panic have only deepened.
About this time last year, I was in a very bad cycle in which I would become
increasingly depressed at my lack of progress and be unable to make progress as
a result. It took several good friends to recognize just how low I had sunk. I
knew things were bad, but I didn’t know just how bad. In short, I was so demoralized that I had begun talking much
slower than normal, if I spoke to anyone at all. I rarely smiled or laughed. I
was often on the verge of tears without understanding why I felt that way,
because I had gotten so used to avoiding thinking about what was going on
rather than facing it and voicing how I was feeling to myself or to anyone.
I
think the way that I handled the same kind of feelings that surfaced over the weekend demonstrates how far
I’ve come since a year ago. Even though I felt awful this morning--I was
literally sick to my stomach and developed a pain in my right shoulder-blade
(though I’m not sure if that is from stress, poor posture while sitting at the
computer, poor sleeping arrangements, or a combination of all of these things
and feeling sick)--even though I wanted desperately to take the day off, I made
myself write. I actually wrote more than I have on any previous day since I
changed my writing process, in fact, though, to be fair, about three-quarters
of one of the four single-spaced pages I churned out was a paragraph listing
some of the weird descriptions of nobles who make up Arthur’s plenary court
that I think deserve closer examination. But that kind of work is also often
necessary, since you might find patterns in the weird descriptions that you
can’t see otherwise. And that’s precisely what happened today. And once I
began recognizing those patterns--I think there is more than one pattern to
consider--things began falling into place.
So
what is today’s lesson? I’m not sure. I don’t feel particularly better for
having written anything at the moment, for one thing. But I also don’t feel any
worse for having done so. And maybe that is the lesson, if there is one.
Writing didn’t hurt me. Perhaps the problem I was having this time last year
was that I thought writing would hurt me, because I was focused on ‘good’ and
‘bad’ writing rather than simply on writing. But perhaps not. There is always
the possibility that there is no huge lesson or ‘secret knowledge’ that I’m
supposed to unearth in these writing sessions. I don’t think that’s necessarily
a bad thing. The idea of ‘secret knowledge’ bugs me in a way, in fact, because
it implies that I need to find answers to all of the questions I have about my
writing process and about me. But why should having questions that are
unanswerable be a bad thing? Aren’t they the best sorts of questions, because
they keep us moving forward rather than back?
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