I’ve been struggling with an issue for the last couple of years. I’ve been fighting against my seeming inability to buckle down to write. I’m not scared of writing or even at a loss for words – I’m just not doing it. Always in the past, I’ve chalked it up to some sort of bad mood or shitty memory from my youth, wrecking my creativity. But after some consideration, it seems my mood is dependent on my lack of progress, not the other way around. And I just can’t seem to dredge up a memory that comes close to fitting the mold. Then a couple of random thoughts smacked me – one from outside, one from inside.
I heard a classical musician (on the radio) talking about her newfound hobby – painting. She loves it, because it reduces stress and gives her an extra creative outlet. As she put it (I paraphrase), ‘I insist on being professional and exacting in my music, but I can relax and play with the brush.’ Seems she’s pretty good at it, too. That started me thinking.
I have always known that I dislike work. I cannot enumerate the number of jobs I’ve wrecked and/or lost because my lousy work attitude torpedoed my performance. Whenever anything I’m doing starts to feel like work, I drop it like a dead lizard. And go wash my hands. However, I’d always believed that writing ‘wasn’t really work’ and was therefore immune to that reaction. I guess not, because writing has apparently now become actual work.
Why do I hate work? It’s difficult to say, but my guess would be that various twists and complications in my personality brought me to the conclusion that I was ‘above all that’. I’ve mentioned my delusions before. This was one of the big ones. From a very young age I felt that I was so smart and so talented, that everything should come easily to me. By extension, anything which didn’t come easily was stupid and unworthy. So, that meant that work – especially manual labor – was for ‘those other people’. As I said – delusional.
It seems that what’s been happening with my writing is that I have been unconsciously seeing it as work, so my knee-jerk reaction to work kicks in, and I’ve been avoiding it. I’m not sure when the transition from ‘hobby’ to ‘work’ occurred, but I’m guessing at least two years ago. I note that this reaction does affect my blog output but not my journalling. It seems I don’t consider journalling to be work. Perhaps I don’t see journalling as work because it’s almost entirely private. Interestingly, I have also been avoiding freelance writing because it’s ‘work’. Get paid to write, equals work.
As I mentioned before, this was an unconscious change in perspective, so therefore invisible to me. Because the motivation was invisible, I spent way too long chasing down dead-end streams of thought, compounded by my emotional reaction to the whole business of not getting my writing done. I’ve wasted a lot of ink (and computer bits) trying to find the answer. So, now I feel chagrined – because now I know the answer, and it wasn’t what I thought. As well as the fact that I’ve known how to deal with this problem for many years.
Over the decades I have developed a method for going to work, doing work and even doing extra work – even work that was stupid and boring. This was necessary, not just to keep a job, but to stay married. My wife was understandably loath to go to her job for 50 or 60 hours every week while I sat on my ass and looked pretty. I developed what I can only call a Stoic attitude towards work just after starting at a particularly odious job in Southern California. Sadly, there it worked altogether too well. I was stuck in that job for almost ten years. But that same attitude has served me well ever since.
Because of my delusions and the attitudes that went with them, I had no idea how to actually work. When things got difficult, I’d either quit or wait to get fired. This was a very immature stance for a man in his 30’s! I’m sure my parents tried to teach me how to work, but if they did, I have no memory of the process. My newfound Stoic attitude kept me engaged and learning, whether in a hired job or self-employed. Now I can see that this mindset can help me to write every day, no matter how I feel or whether or not I feel inspired. I just need to do my job.
So, it seems the answer to the whole conundrum boils down to this: writing is now my job. I have finally seen and accepted that consciously. Art will remain a (serious) hobby, and act as a relief valve for me. However, I need to apply the same work ethic that I have for hired jobs to my work as a writer. I have to sit down at my computer or my paper pad and turn out at least a thousand words – every day. At the moment this is still a part-time job, and the pay sucks, but I must be attentive and diligent with my work. The pay will get better, and the hours will increase on their own. To reiterate: writing is my job. I need to treat it with the respect it deserves.
If you have dealt with similar problems in your own writing journey, I hope this helps.
Be well.
bcd