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Anyone else have weird feels about time? The management and/or scarcity thereof?
Time is a valuable commodity. This I know. And while I do try to allow for the idle moments of reading and lurking on the socials, I also feel such pressure to make every moment count. Somehow. In the past the notion has made me so stressed that I’d rather freeze and forget that the world existed for a while. These days I try to see the bigger picture of the rhythm of things. Some things are fast, some are slow and some are *shrug* fuck-if-I-know. Things will take what they will take.
It is all good and well to believe such…and another entirely to practice.
I’ve been an artist most of my life, art does in many ways come naturally to me. I have much practice at seeing something with an artist’s eye and replicating it. I’m seeing my skills growing exponentially since I started into digital art and healing my creativity. It has been wonderful to see myself grow and blossom. But art has always come more easily than words, at least story words.
The time it is taking me to go about writing similar to the way I create art feels too big, too much. In working to understand the way of things before diving in, of playing with the words, even if it is only in my mind and not on paper (real or virtual) I’ve felt stuck. Like I’m not moving forward in the way I should. Or even in the way I want to. So much of me wants to be just as good at writing as I am at art and yet I know that I cannot expect that of myself. Not yet.
The rational parts of me see the time I’m putting into reading books about writing, into world building, and it celebrates. The irrational and worried parts of me see only that I’ve not written as many words as I’d wanted so far this year and that I’m really not putting in as much time as I could into the prep work either. It pushes into my mind that the time I’m spending doing other (usually fun) things in my life is wasteful and I need to spend all of my time doing more productive things.
But all that does is make the danger music play and there is nothing there that is really dangerous. Only the fact that my brain thinks that my own stressful perceptions are a threat to me. And then I cannot even pull myself together enough to make a dedicated effort because I am so tired from constantly living with my body slowly panicking for no apparent reason.
So, yeah, time is important but the pressure to do something shouldn’t take precedence over taking the time it takes to do whatever it is. Rationally I know that writing will take some time. Writing was something that I gave up, and in some ways felt stolen from me as a kid.
I loved to write silly, possibly nonsensical stories about my siblings, friends and I’s adventures in the woods surrounding my childhood home. But then my life changed drastically when my father left, and further still when school really started to demand things from us kids. The carefree days of life were over and more rules entered my life, more ways in which I worried whether I was doing it right…and honestly knowing I’d never win, deep down.
Writing the story I want to write will take the time it will take. I am diligently trying to learn what my writing process is and the finer points of writing a good story. And that will have to be good enough for now. Healing my creativity has come a long way and I see writing as the next step in this crazy fun adventure. It may not all be fun and games but I’m learning and I’m trying to believe that that is enough. That I am enough and that I am doing the best that I can. What matters is that I’m doing something and moving towards the goal. However small the steps may be or feel.
Time will keep moving forward and that still doesn’t leave me without the time I will need to do the writing (or prep) I need to do. At least that is what I am working on believing.
PS. I finished these cute plant creatures this last week. Based on a plant my mom brought me that I've since discovered is a Star Window plant in the Haworthia genus. Don't let their cute friend shapes fool you though because they will mess you up...
