My pup is sick. Yesterday, she was exceptionally lazy, which would be fine if she wasn't a terrier/border collie/lab mix. She's supposed to be exuberant and normally she wears out us, our neighbors and their dog. Yesterday, she didn't though. She didn't want to play or run or be happy. Then, she started limping. And now this morning the incision spot where she just had surgery is red and swollen.
She needs a vet. My husband will take her in around an hour where he was able to snag a last minute appointment. This is the first time in her life she has been this kind of sick.
Here she is with me hiking a few years ago.
My day has started out anxious and when it starts like that? It is hard for me to come down from it. So, naturally, I'm using it in every other crevice in my life.
I started a guided planner this year.
Here's the beast (above).
I bought it for my birthday back in November knowing I needed more guidance for the coming year. I need accountability and reminders and something to keep my fingers moving and a place to put my lists so that I can actually put them to work. I know this. Most of you probably know this, because if you talk to me for even a moment it is apparent that my mind is scattered and I have a million things I must do immediately.
We also all know that you cannot do everything at once or you have nothing at all. So my planner is a monster.
It lays out life goals, year goals, monthly goals and weekly goals. It has quotes and phrases meant to inspire. It has room for mind maps and goal setting on every, single, page. And most days, I love it. I pull out my colored specialty pens and get to work on scheduling my dreams so that my brain-skipping can finally find purchase.
Today though, I hate it. It is making me see all the things I've sent out to do and how little I've actually done them. I see the checks I didn't make next to the things I didn't do and I question why I wasted so much time yesterday. last week. today.
When I am anxious I vividly see my lack of self-discipline. My mind goes blank at the word accomplish because I know I didn't do that recently. My anxiety makes me want to create lists, upon lists, upon lists. I want to write down financial numbers and page numbers and writing numbers and then I want to compare them all to where I should be, or what I have (or worse what other's have), just to see exactly where I'm lacking.
I want to find all the flaws before doing the work and then tell myself the work is useless.
I scrabble for anything to fill the time in my brain. I need something to distract me and then distract me from the original distraction and so on until the day is over. I need to believe I can do anything, without ever actually have to have done it.
Restless anxiety is funny like that.
Which is why I haven't been able to write in so long. I feel failure looming. I thought it was my book that was the problem. I thought if I knew what to write, if I knew where I was going, I could do it. Well, I know where I'm going in the book. It's plotted. I've also come up with some great fodder to get there and still I cannot concentrate enough to write it out. I've been staring at the screen blankly for days. Weeks possibly.
A bunch of plot notes for my current novel, and not a word to write.
I have encouragement, motivation, an idea, a support group... What I lack is concentration. Anxiety tells me I'm not very good. Restlessness tells me there's other, better things to do. And I believe them. I believe them because right now, I'm broken. My habits are off. My time management is non-existent and my self-discipline is lacking. And I'm not entirely sure how to build it back up.
My creative due diligence is a cup half full. And it's yelling obscenities at me that I would rather not repeat and have been trying to ignore. It's partially working, which is problem in a nut shell. I hate when I feel like i'm failing. Flailing around with this obscene amount of entitlement that in anyone else I loathe, giving excuses as to why I'm incompetent instead of just becoming competent.
EMBRACE THE SUCK! My better-self yells. Still, I can't seem to make myself listen.
School starts back up in sixteen days and that is making the pressure unbearable. The boundary of that day listed on my calendar makes me feel the waste of my time even more. I should be writing right now, constantly, because when schools starts back up I'll have even less time. My thoughts clam up and regret starts to boil on the edges and I'm too far seized to write. To read. To watch movies. To do anything productive or happy or good. The cycle of time is cruel to me.
I want to leave this on a positive spin. An upbeat farewell, if you will. But I won't. I'll leave it right here in the mound of mud I've created because that's exactly where I lay today. Sometimes restless, anxiety (or any form of whatever it is-- sometimes it's just a shitty day) wins a round or two.
<3
J.B
