It's a beautifully chilly Tuesday in October, the absolute perfect weather for someone who loves fall, and I'm sitting here at my desk wondering exactly what I'm neglecting if I take a walk. Is it my capstone project? What about my line edits for the now-revised Draft 4? Or my reviews on Influenster?
It's not that any of these things are urgently due. I'm halfway through my interviews while the rest of my class is still waiting for their IRBs--the University research board that ensures all research designs are ethical--to be approved. I've gotten basically every part of my capstone paper written, except the results and conclusion. I have, at the very least, a month before anything else needs to be done. And where I would usually take the time to revise or write some more, the ink has barely dried on Draft 4. For the good of my draft, I actually need to let it sit: I'll never catch mistakes when it's so fresh in my mind. And I've fulfilled all my VoxBox tasks for Influenster.
What's stopping me from taking a walk--the literal best thing for my crunchy body and anxious brain?
It's an innate drive. Something that's been drilled into me by my upbringing and my own anxiety, an energy that always pushes me forward, whether I want it to or not. It's a product of living in a capitalist society, a thing I alternately embrace and loathe. And while writing something every day, a product of this mindset, can be the best cure for writer's block, I'm finding myself in something of a mind shift this semester.
I want to talk to you about radical self love, a thing I first learned in a Mental Health First Aid training that I attended for work a couple weeks ago. When we engage in behaviors that we feel disappoint ourselves and others, regardless of whether our perceptions are true or not, we enter what one of the MHFA trainers calls a cycle of "stinkin' thinkin'."
When it took me three weeks to complete the revisions on the last three chapters, despite literally having them mapped out, I felt like a failure.Why was I having such difficulty? I used to bang out five chapters of actually difficult revisions every week, while also juggling school, work, and personal responsibilities. And my body had hurt a lot more then than it did the past couple weeks. Why couldn't I do this?
I didn't see that the past couple weeks had actually not been easy. Although my journal entries were less emotional and far more transactional, that didn't mean that I wasn't feeling big emotions and dealing with a lot of stress--just that I didn't yet have the time to feel the impact of all I was going through. Real talk that I hate to admit: my manuscript, the most important, wonderful thing in my life, the reason I wake up in the morning, this brilliant brainchild of mine...was taking a backseat of necessity.
In early October, my uncle and his roommate lost their house to the Hurricane Ian storm surge. They lived on Fort Myers Beach, right off of Estero Boulevard, and the now-infamous Main Street where Camera 9 was submerged. They saw videos of their house floating away on the news, and I saw them, too. For a week, my whole family was in survival mode, scrambling to figure out care packages, whether they would have to come up and live with us, and how my uncle, who's diabetic, was going to get his insulin when we didn't know if he'd even packed it. Every night, I waited for updates from his burner phone, which was running out of minutes. His hotel was flooded. They had no electricity and the water needed to be boiled to be clean enough to drink. They had only the clothes on their back, thinking it would be just surface damage to their house, like Hurricane Andrew was.
And I only told two people. I did my work. I put on a full face of makeup the morning that we found out he had lost the house, and I went into work, and I listened to my coworkers talking about attending weddings. I came home. I attended class on Zoom, and every time I came close to telling someone, I just didn't. I didn't cry, but maybe I should have.
And then the next week, my capstone ramped up. Work ramped up. I interviewed 6 people in 3 days and held advising appointments in between. There was days when I was in 7 hours of meetings and my eyes were so tired, and yet I still drank my tea and kept going. I found out my grandma is sick with (possibly) covid and struggling to breathe. My mom drove her to the hospital this morning. She saw pictures, through my grandma's phone, of my uncle and his roommate standing within the devastated remains of their home. It was just timber.
And so when I wondered why I couldn't produce, I only have to look back at this record to know that I had permission to rest. So I gave myself permission, all while a little voice at the back of my mind whispered that I shouldn't have to have a reason to not produce. Sometimes, great things arise out of just taking a break and honoring where you're at.
So many times, I am reluctant to call myself a writer. I am still uncomfortable with the term, to be honest. I can only write it here, knowing that, like, two people are reading this. There is this secret shame bound up in this term, this imposter syndrome. I can call myself a poet. I have published works that people can find, and so that title can never be taken away from me. But writer? That's a little up in the air. But also, pushing myself until I can potentially achieve that title results in unnecessary pressure and a product that isn't the best it could be.
Practicing radical self-love means divorcing this notion of worth=productivity. Before I am anything else, I am a human being, not a machine. And although it's going to take years to undo this idea, I can start now, by taking a walk in the beautiful fall weather before I have to drive to class.
Comments