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Joshua Doležal's avatar

Glad you're gaining some confidence in your body -- that's a key step forward at the end of the essay. I'm not questioning the diagnosis, but I wonder if some of these things exist on a spectrum, like autism? Maybe an ignorant question. I face a lot of the challenges you do, and I think everyone needs a strategy to fill random calendar slots with productivity. Mine tends to be setting timers and adding even mundane events to my calendar. I have two weekend days before a big trip West, and I have to block out time for garden chores, grocery shopping, packing, etc. Sometimes a to-do list on my desk or kitchen counter helps me cross things off. Or a list of Reminders on my phone. Without those things, I very easily while away free time.

I think another part of this is the felt urgency that comes with a deadline. Since Substack isn't our actual job, what's the rush? If I have a whole week to write a post, often it will take exactly that long. If I've been slammed all week and I need to set a timer for two hours to hammer it out, it will get done then. But these are self-imposed deadlines with pretty low stakes. When I was teaching, running a first-year seminar, chairing a committee, or chairing a department, there were pretty significant deadlines that had higher stakes. It's kind of like the principle that we apply to our writing: a reader won't feel compelled to keep reading if there isn't clear urgency to see what happens.

It takes a rare kind of person to be able to summon that kind of urgency all day every day, or for an unexpected block of time on the calendar, without a clear external consequence for *not* being more productive. I guess that's the question I have at the end of this windy post: do you think some of your struggles have to do with the fast that you don't experience much significant pain (other than vague guilt) if you're not more efficient? Would having a Sword of Damocles like that hanging over those open calendar blocks change anything? It would/it does for me.

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Jean-Koan Garibaldi's avatar

Gotta admit, your unproductive writing breaks are a heck of a lot more productive than mine 😂 I've always chalked mine up to old-fashioned laziness... wish there was a med for that haha.

And, oof, are you right about that reflection on indecision. I suppose I didn't think of it partly because I'm earlier on in the journey of writing publicly—and one always imagines that things such as indecision will get easier as one gets further along. But it stands to reason that this threat never really does go away.

The trope of the one-hit-wonder writer/creative exists for a reason, I guess—you get your one big hit and then indecision cripples the road ahead from there, not least because of the challenging expectations the initial hit gave rise to. Success itself ironically then becomes one of the dangers of freedom, because it is a success that can't be so easily replayed.

Staying connected to the essence of the writing instead of the outcome is maybe the key. That's my best guess at the optimistic take, at least, haha. Turns out this approach is generally my solution to the laziness, too, to tie together these threads!

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