On Not Writing
dispatches from the perfectionist hell of my own making x
So here I am again, staring at another blank page. I don’t know that I really believe in writer’s block – or rather, I think there are so many ways to be stuck, so many ways to second guess yourself and get in your own way. An inability to share the work, or to finish it, to get the words down, to face the imperfect realisation of your seemingly perfect idea.
The ideas are always the easy part for me, but lately I can’t seem to organise them. I have hurried journal pages and post-its of scrawl, mumbled voice memos and hundreds of iphone notes. I can barely organise my thoughts at all.
A secret I haven’t told anyone yet: I don’t even remember the last time I watched a film. All my interests seem theoretical at the minute. I’m reading less, I don’t go to the cinema, I barely even watch TV. I go to yoga half as often as I did last year, and I’ve still not managed to get back to ballet classes. I’m a phone addict, of course, but even then I’m spending less time on my phone. Everything I cajole myself into requires significant external coercion – commitments with friends I’m afraid to miss out on, the last minute cancellation fee for exercise classes, tickets already paid for. Left to my own devices, time passes; I’m not entirely sure what I’m doing with it.
As last year ended, I felt my life tumble out of one very difficult phase and into something new, but I’m not always convinced this new one is better. One thing I have spent a lot of time doing this spring is ruminating, thinking in circles over and over (and over and over and over) again. It is, at least, better than pining or catastrophising, but probably not by much.
Obviously, a major factor at play is that I now have a job again, which is a massive relief and a source of stability and also new ground for self-inflicted perfectionist torture. I am quite worried, recently, that everything I was really supposed to do, or that would make me something approaching content, is just not financially or practically viable any more.
The writing I’m supposed to be doing – pieces I’ve committed to writing, the novel I worry I’ll never finish – is taking several times longer than it ought. There is a bottle of champagne that has been hidden in a secret corner of my bedroom since my trip to the area two summers ago. I joke to my friends: it must be so sad! I am waiting for something to celebrate, something really significant to me. By the time I got my job, I’d been unemployed for so long that it no longer felt like a meaningful victory, not one I’d want to waste too much indulgence on. I went to the pub with friends, but I felt relief more than any sense of accomplishment. Is accomplishment even something I can hope for in my life now?
I know I have high expectations of myself, but I have been saying for years now I need a win, and then continuing to tread water. I am so frustrated with myself all of the time!! My fears of the future only grow. Last summer, in my latest - and most successful – bout of therapy, I spent a lot of time working on perfectionism, trying to build a habit of imperfect action, to find a way around my desire for perfection (or rather my fear of imperfection).1 Perfect is the enemy of done, and all that. It felt something like I imagine exposure therapy to be, working in small ways to practice that kind of vulnerability, to allow myself to exist, human and flawed, and learn it is a safe and ordinary thing to do. I need to revisit these lessons. To practice this again. I’ll write more, soon, I hope. Much like this little missive, what I share will no doubt be very imperfect!
I would emphasise here that I am not saying I have successfully ever met this standard of perfection. No perfectionist is ever all that effective, in my experience – it’s a tendency that brings out the worst in anyone, and would make an exceedingly stupid humble-brag.