Motivation and Balance

I have this thing where I will feel really motivated or inspired to write for a moment, so I pull out my iPad and type out things like “I have not been to church since the week Lent started,” or “I started a new project today…”

I get a couple paragraphs into my writing, then realize that I do not know where I am going with my piece. I worry that what I write and share on my blog will bring discomfort, or unwanted conversations, or incorrect assumptions. I worry that my writing will seem as scattered as my brain feels sometimes, and that will turn folks away.

I get a surge of motivation on Monday’s at the beginning of the month — the energy to treat that day like the beginning of a new year, the willingness to approach it like the holiday we celebrate once every turn around the sun. I find two hours on Monday morning to get my stuff together, to get to a coffee shop and sit down with my Americano and write. I will get a few pages of some project done, then rush off to work. At work, even the projects I am ahead on feel like I am catching up. Even the stuff I am succeeding at feels like marginal accomplishment.

So I get that energy out with a run the next day, I slide in to work a bit later than I mean to. Then the next day, I try to balance out giving to my personal life with the appearance of showing up to work in a more timely fashion — even though I know few notice or care much.

In all things there should be balance, and in most things I feel completely unbalanced, only showing balance on the front.

During the day, I think of a million things to share on Twitter in a thread, or blog about. And then I get home and cook dinner and eat dinner, then read another book (probably a comic or Star Wars or something about The Church). I scroll through other peoples blogs and think I should comment, then realize something is messed up with the way my commenting works and it leads back to my old blog not my current blog and maybe I should fix that but also here’s some stuff for the primary election I need to read and there’s a stack of books I keep buying that constantly grows exponentially larger than my ability to ever read in my lifetime or I also need to do laundry and clean the kitchen or take the garbage out but I bought this Xbox back in November maybe it is finally time to sell some of the Funko Pops sitting in the basement that I do not display anymore as I plan this trip for L’s birthday in the back of my head and figure out how to better manage my money so yeah, let’s just get dinner out tonight, I forgot to meal plan for this week.

OR:

During the day, I think of a million things to share on Twitter in a thread, or blog about. And then I get home and use my tiny pocket computer (an iPhone 6S that I’m pretty convinced I will have for another two or three years at this point) to play a game where Star Wars characters fight each other, while in the background some show appears in the screen on the television.

My creativity is not lacking starting points, it is lacking inspiration.

So by the second week of the month, trying to keep up with the enthusiasm and energy I had with starting my project has dwindled. And also, it is this time travel thing where every time I sit down to work on it, I have to remember exactly everything I have done before. I have to immerse myself in it to figure out where and when I am.

In all things there should be balance, and I am just trying to figure out how to do that.