Should-ing on myself
[Currently sipping Premium Lychee Black tea from Bird Pick Tea & Herb in El Monte, CA]
It’s been a little bit since my last entry. I haven’t given up on writing here, but because my job requires me to also write quite a lot, my writerly juices are usually squeezed out of me by the time I wrap up the work day.
Lately, I’ve been entering an interesting mental spiral where I
Tell myself I should write for my personal pursuits. Then I…
Tell myself I should give myself a break if I’m not up to task. Then I…
Tell myself I should exercise writing, even at low energy, because deliberate practice makes progress. Then I…
Tell myself I should listen to my biofeedback which is saying RELAX. Then I…
Tell myself I should want to write, because it’s one of my passions, isn’t it? Then I…
Tell myself I should be mindful of the time as I need to get adequate rest at night to be in shape for the next day.
End result: it’s been weeks since my last post.
I’ve been mitigating the pain of this self-inflicted guilt a tad through knowing that I’ve continued the other on-actual-paper writing activities I started. Progress is progress. Plus, I haven’t exactly promoted this website broadly yet, so my audience is unknown and I feel less beholden to any rapt readers. (Watch me wince about this entry later when the massive fans come, should they ever.)
Back to the mental spiral though.
It’s a classic case of should-ing on myself. I’m not sure yet where I first heard that admonishment of not “should-ing on yourself” (a punny stand-in for not sh*tting on yourself) but it comes to mind often when I get too think-y. Am I choosing to do something because I want to, or am I choosing to do something because I think I should? The focused practice of writing regularly sometimes straddles that line for me as there is occasionally an idealistic picture in my mind’s eye of myself as a happy writer who flourishes with beautifully written thoughts abound and at other times, I wonder if I’ve only imagined this future because some people at some point in my life have said “I write good.”
Yet where will this mental exercise take me, and will I reap any benefit from spiraling down these thoughts?
Probably 1) nowhere, and 2) nope.
So, I’ll consider this post a declaration to stop should-ing on myself. I will continue to write. It will be when and how I choose, and I will not give in to unidentified sources of obligation (or even identified ones because honestly, they’re all self-imposed at this point).
P.S. I’ll also stop telling myself I should keep these posts constrained to entries about the writing process. I certainly have more to say than just that!