Wednesday 1/5/22
I have toyed with the idea lately of doing a daily entry on here which will be short, and offer a tip. People will often say to me that I inspire them. And though no one would wish to have my life right now, I've noticed--just as I've noticed the irony--that many people seem to want to do what I do.
I don't know that I will do this. But I do have one tip for now, or for a start, whichever it may be: Force yourself.
I know a man who tells me throughout the year that at that given point of the year he is depressed and therefore lacks drive or motivation. What this man does not realize is that he says this at all the times of the year. I know he thinks it's a single time. It has become who he is, though, and it is as if he barely partakes in his own life. He waits for something to magically change, when he feels differently, and then the problem will sort itself out.
But this is typically not how solutions work. That time does not come. The feeling does not come. Not on its own. You have to force yourself.
You begin to feel right once you start. The only way, often, to start, is to make yourself start. As unpleasant as that is or can feel that it is. Force yourself. Sometimes that is with exercise. It's cold and you're not going to feel like being out there. But force yourself to put on the layers, and then force yourself outside and find yourself in the street and make yourself run. To give but one example.
Writers always wait until they feel ready to go, and they give this some silly name like "inspiration" because that sounds good in their little cliques. They never get this feeling, and their fear builds up, and their lethargy, and their excuses, and their self-doubt, and thus very few writers write anything at all, let alone regularly.
That's how we build ourselves up, that's how we get things done. It's great to get in a rhythm, and you flow from one thing to another, or within one thing, but that doesn't always happen. Often it doesn't. The motivation might not magically arrive. The drive. The impetus. You have to demand this control that you can have. Go against your feelings, what you "want" to do, your warm bed. You have to force yourself.
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