Day: March 5, 2016

There is no magic pill

Lynn

I’ve spent the whole day planning.

I’ve planned my calorie intake (11850 per week if that’s of interest to you).

I’ve planned my menu (just eat as much of the same thing every day this week as possible to save time).

I’ve planned to quit drinking coffee again and do it with as little agony as possible, because caffeine withdrawal SUCKS and since I had 4 or 5 cups of coffee today (can’t remember exactly) plus three cups of green tea and I’ve been having that much every day for over a week now, I know I’m going to suffer tomorrow no matter how much green tea I drink trying to offset the problem.*

I’ve planned how to catch up on my writing goal of 1,180,000 words in 12 months.

I’m tired of planning, but the truth is, I don’t feel well enough to do much more than plan. Mentally, my thoughts are a jumbled mess. Physically, I have a bellyache and a headache. I blame the coffee.

*Why? Why, oh, why am I stuck on this coffee question again? I had a moment today where I realized I just don’t feel well. I’ve had a lot of headaches this week, many more than is usual for me, and my stomach has stayed upset. All the energy I had when I first started drinking coffee again is already gone. I did great with my focus and concentration for a bit less than a week and now it’s just gone. I feel terrible physically. Worse than I did, for sure. I’m also right back where I started when it comes to my writing. And if I’m not going to get the benefits, why the hell am I drinking the stuff? As desperately as I want to find one, there is no magic pill.

Thinking out loud helps me think better

Lynn

I started wondering at the purpose of this blog again this morning, just as I was about to write another “I’m not meeting my goals at the moment, but I’m going to do better” post and discovered it would be post number 721, and I actually came up with a couple of interesting (to me) answers today.

It comes down to this: I think better when I’m talking or writing. Or I shouldn’t say “think” better, more like, I think in a more organized way—writing things down, or talking them out, is a way for me to unravel the thoughts that knot up in my head. Because that happens a lot. I can get caught up in circular thinking and I lose track of what I’m thinking about even. Since I don’t always have people around to talk to—or I just don’t want to bother those people—I choose to write the thoughts down instead.

I like writing things down. I have lots of journals and notepads and Evernote, and when I get antsy, I start writing it out. I write down so much stuff that I often look back at it and wonder what’s the point, but I do it anyway, again and again. I cannot resist the urge to write stuff down. I don’t really want to resist that urge, tbh.

That still leaves unanswered the question of why I choose to blog those thoughts instead of just leave them in Evernote or in a tablet somewhere (where, tbh, tons and tons of those thoughts still end up despite me having the blog!). I don’t actually know the answer to that. I’ve tried to figure it out a dozen times or twenty, but I never seem to come up with an answer that satisfies me. I’ve tried several times to just limit myself to writing about my writing in Evernote or a journal, and yet, I always end up back here, ready to make all this stuff public.

Maybe it’s a form of accountability that I can’t get anywhere else and I just don’t know where to draw the line about what I share and what I don’t share in the effort to be accountable.

Could be. Could also be—simply—that I like imagining someone reading this stuff and commiserating with me and being hopeful that I’ll eventually reach one of my crazy-big goals. :D

Can’t do that with a private blog in Evernote. No one but me will ever read those things and I’m not enough of a narcissist to think they will. After I die, my journals and computers and files all will end up in the trash or a box in someone’s attic to molder and fade and become obsolete and unusable.

TBH, I don’t mind that. People get on with their lives even after someone dear to them dies and that’s just natural. But while I’m here, I’d prefer to write here, on the blog, and hope that maybe someone will get something—even just a moment’s entertainment—out of my words.

That feels real to me and I think I finally understand why I can’t just keep this all to myself in Evernote.

Sorry, but post number 722 is coming soon. :D