Category: comfort zone

what pain are you willing to sustain?

November 11, 2015 / / 0 Comments

What pain do you want to sustain? What pursuit is important enough to you (what do you want enough) that you can endure the pain associated with it? What are you willing to risk in order to pursue what you love?

I would like the pain of pushing myself to write more and more words. Two months ago I started waking up earlier to write at least 500 words a day. That quickly started to feel like far too little, so I made it a thousand words every morning. If I want to be a writer, I need to increase that challenge any time it stops feeling difficult. My average word count for 120 days of showing up at 4am is well below a thousand words a day. I need to step up my game. The challenge of pushing myself harder is so worth it because that means I’ve grown and am growing. In his book Flow, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi talks about finding that sweet spot on a sliding scale between comfort and pain that keeps you growing. We have to be challenged just enough to continually improve.

I think I could handle the pain of rejection over and over again if it meant that I was putting myself out there enough to get noticed. I don’t create enough to actually submit my work to publishers, galleries, or contests. Every time I think about submitting to a short story contest or something of that ilk, I’m always disappointed by the backlog of old work that I have. I need to be creating new content. I love the reward of pushing through ideas and watching the word count grow. I love when a character becomes so solidified that you can hear exactly how they would say something, and the characters can practically write the scenes themselves.

I’m willing to suffer trolls and negative feedback because that means my ideas have landed on someone. That means someone is listening. That means I’ve said something substantial enough for someone to disagree. That means I’ve been putting myself out there and haven’t been safe or neutral. I got my first troll on Twitter a few weeks ago. I haven’t posted much and I don’t have many followers (nor do I follow many people), but some random person felt the need to question my post, which means that they read it, disagreed, and wanted to engage. The guy was a douche and a career troll, so that made it very easy not to take it personally or to engage with him back. But that means I made it onto someone’s radar.

I’m even willing to risk the embarrassment of going through the old journal I just dug out of my nightstand if it means sparking some kind of story. I’m not even sure how back it goes, but it certainly hasn’t been touched in years. I’m a little afraid to open it, but I would like to start using a physical journal again. It’s a nice leather bound one, and there’s something about ritual and tangible artifacts that make the act of creating feel so romantic. But I’m not as free on the written page as I feel I can be in a password protected digital document. There’s no security on paper. Not that I have anything at all to hide, but as a creative it feels risky to do the necessary thing of being honest and vulnerable.

I’m also willing to put myself out here on my blog every week, even if no one reads it. It can be disheartening to show up and do the work if it feels like it doesn’t matter yet. But if the work is important enough to you, you do it even if there’s no audience. Whatever your passion is, you have to love the doing, not just the results. You have to take the process and the leg work and being a nobody for a while and love the work enough to still keep doing it every day even if there’s no reward for it.

My wish for everyone is that they find that one thing that lights them up enough to endure the nitty gritty even if it doesn’t result in the warm and fuzzy. What makes you show up every day, even when no one is looking? What pain are you willing to sustain?

saying yes to writing

November 4, 2015 / / 0 Comments

Do you prepare the pants off of something and then freeze when the day arrives to actually do the work? That’s me. I’ll research something into the ground in order to feel like I’m making progress on something, which I think is a subconscious means of keeping me from the real task at hand. It’s day four of NaNoWriMo, and although I have character outlines and a solid idea of what direction I want to go with my novel, so far my actual word count is pretty measly.

I said no to a lot of things in order to participate in NaNo this year, so I feel like there’s a lot at stake for me to have something to show for it. The beauty of this challenge is that it’s meant to be fun, and there’s a built-in community of participants to hold you accountable, to meet with and share your story, or to work on your story with fellow participants right there beside you. Besides just getting my butt in the chair and writing, I think an in-person meetup is the magic ingredient I’ve been missing. Community and accountability are huge, but it can be easy to let online interactions be a substitute for being around real people in the flesh. So many of us are introverts, which can make it a challenge to step out and meet new people and share something so personal as a work in progress. But everyone is in the same boat. The mixture of commonality and diversity in a group setting is what is going to stretch you to see your own story beyond your limited point of view.

Even if all of you have your nose in a notebook or laptop, the mere fact of being in community is going to push you to accomplish your goals. Getting away from the distractions of home certainly helps, too. Do you feel inspired by the smell of books or coffee or fresh grass? Go write in a library, coffee shop, or park. Fresh surroundings can give you a fresh perspective on your work. Stuck on character development? Go people-watching. Or go for a walk to get the blood flowing and to get out of your own head for an hour. Stretching your comfort zone will make you a better writer by expanding your world.

I invite you to write with me. The community of writers is what makes NaNoWriMo something to look forward to every year. Here is a NaNoWriMo word count calendar to help you stay on track with your daily writing. Their website is also a terrific resource for your novel, whether you’re seasoned or have never written before. If you sign up, I’m trueimage83 if you’d like a writing buddy. I’d also love to see you join the conversation here in the comments. What are you struggling with right now with your writing? What tools make the process easier for you? I’d love to hear from you. Happy noveling!

growing pains

October 14, 2015 / / 0 Comments

I’m not much of a gardener, but I’m coming at you with another plant analogy. When plants outgrow their containers, they need to be repotted. If their roots are constrained, their growth is stunted. The art of bonsai constrains a tree over a long period of time to keep it miniature. A huge redwood, if trained into submission, can be a hundred years old and no more than two feet tall. That’s cute, but I don’t want to be a bonsai; I want to be a mighty redwood.

I’ve been at my current job for eight years; at the current location for seven of those. I’ve developed friendships and know the store like the back of my hand. I’m not patting myself on the back, but I’ve been told I’m very good at my job. I’ve worn a pretty good groove into my position. And I’ve seen a lot of people come and go, for better or worse. Now it’s my turn. Sometimes, you just have to call time move forward, even if it’s painful to uproot yourself. Sometimes you just know you’re going to stagnate if you stay comfortable any longer. There comes a time when you need to stretch your legs and allow others to come in and grow where you once flourished.

Or perhaps that’s only what I’m telling myself to alleviate the guilt of leaving. It may very well be entirely selfish. I want to pass a baton, not unload a burden. But it will certainly not be without tears. I hate goodbyes and avoid them whenever possible. There have already been tears—for this transplant and many more before it. Moving on and saying goodbye is a part of life. But it is a pain we choose when we know the benefits will eventually outweigh that pain when the growth we need to experience can’t happen unless we make that hard decision.

There will be growing pains as you spread your roots. You will have to adjust to new soil and new surroundings. And plants benefit greatly from periodic fertilizing. Guess what fertilizer is. That’s right. Sometimes if you want to grow there will be times when you’ll be knee-deep in shit, but you’ll be stronger for it in the end.

Are you spreading your roots and living up to your potential? What might be holding you back? Is there resistance that’s disguising itself as comfort? Is there a step you can take now that will make the growing pains worthwhile in the long run?

 

avoidance & comparison

September 9, 2015 / / 1 Comment

The difference between “failure” and “unstoppable force” is all psychological.

I’m usually a just get it done kind of person, except when it comes to my own personal work. I get up at 4 a.m. every morning to write, but it often gets pushed back to twenty minutes before I have to be out the door for my day job because shower/breakfast/feed the dog….When I come home I put off drawing because I should finish Learn Lettering first. But I also have to do laundry, and I have a massive headache. It’s so easy to fritter away time by pushing back the one thing that needs your focus until after this one little distraction. The feeling of having waded through all of the distractions and looking for more can feel an awful lot like boredom, but it’s a symptom of avoidance. Unless you’re content doing nothing all day every day (which I suspect my readers are not), you know what you have to do. Why does it feel like the last thing in the world you want to do right now? Because it’s important. Why is it the hardest thing to get started? Because the only person who has any expectations of you is the one person telling you to do something else.

I can crush it at the day job because it’s easy to create a clear to-do list for something external; I can detach myself from it. I can put my head down and work through a migraine because I get paid to and I can clock out and go home at the end of the day. It’s not personal. It’s somehow easier to adhere to extrinsic guidelines, even if you’re the one creating the task list within that structure. But imposing guidelines and expecting results for your own personal work is somehow a different animal. There’s that nagging Resistance monster somewhere deep in my subconscious telling me it’s just a hobby.

What I’m really avoiding is the idea that I could actually be successful at something and be capable of leaving my day job in the foreseeable future. I’m excited and scared of leaving something I know exactly how to do–even if I stopped loving it–and diving into something that’s a mix of both familiar and uncharted territory. I’m avoiding picking one thing because I’m afraid that means saying no to everything else.

It’s also scary because being successful means running with successful people..and being able to keep up.

I know it’s ridiculous to fear leaving behind something that doesn’t light you up inside. If there’s something else that makes you feel like it’s your reason for being, why should there be any fear in pursuing that? I guess we’re geared to seek safety. Mundane is safe. The known is safe. Routine and ease are safe. But staying with the known out of convenience doesn’t challenge us to be our best selves.

There’s a fine line between being inspired by surrounding ourselves people who do good work and being intimidated to the point of self-loathing. It’s important to surround yourself with people who are good at a skill you want to learn or who are good at living life in a way that you’d like to live yours. Glean wisdom from their experience, but be careful not to compare their level of success to yours. This can be paralyzing. There’s a tipping point; beware of it.

You get stuff done by showing up and doing it. You get great by practicing. You get prolific by not letting anything stop you.

I can too easily go from looking at the work of someone I admire and thinking, “I can do that,” to looking at the volume of their work and thinking, “Damn, I don’t just need to step up my game…I feel like I’m not even in the game.” It’s like getting pumped up for a workout. You start warming up and get the adrenaline going. “You’ve got this!” you tell yourself. Then you get lapped by a group of marathon runners and lose all desire to continue. Why? Because you made the mistake of comparing where you’re at now to where they are after lots and lots of training. Giving up and sitting on the bench isn’t going to get you to their level. You step up your game by learning from people who know the game better than you, not by quitting because you’re not good enough. You have to start somewhere and improve you, not compare yourself to someone else’s progress. Even experts were new at something once. Even marathoners had to learn how to walk.

Well, what gives the people you admire that level of success? They have a large volume of work because they commit to doing it all the time. They practice all the time. It’s great if you can look at others’ work and be impressed by how much time and effort they put in to become as good as they are, then be inspired to action. It’s dangerous if you fall into the trap of comparison and let it stifle your motivation. It’s crazy how quickly I went from despairing and feeling like a failure to closing my browser and just writing. When I stopped feeling sorry for myself and started writing, I felt like an unstoppable force. I got bogged down in looking to others because I was avoiding my own work.

But you know what’s funny and never feels obvious at the time? Just doing my own work was the solution to getting my own work done. Imagine that! You get stuff done by showing up and doing it. You get great by practicing. You get prolific by not letting anything stop you. The difference between “failure” and “unstoppable force” is all psychological. The only difference was that I made myself start typing what was going on in my head. It’s kind of a chicken-and-egg situation, but doing is what caused the mental shift from negative to positive. I called out the monster that was psyching me out and keeping me from believing I could be anything. I simply stopped avoiding my own work and the fear subsided.

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