And stay off reddit and other social media, and meditate every day, but mostly, most importantly, just do work.
Yeah...as you can see my noveling is not going so well. And as a result I get more and more anxious and stressed because of it. So I talked to my therapist and he suggested I do some relaxation exercises every day first thing in the morning. Well, I actually find that doesn't really do much first thing in the morning, because I'm generally really relaxed in the morning, but as soon as I think about writing and working I get anxious, which is usually in the afternoon and the like. So I adjusted and decided to do an exercise right before I'm supposed to be working. I started using Headspace, this Apple app, which does 10 min meditations. I've only been doing it for like 3 days, so I'm not sure how effective it is, but I think it's having an effect in that it made me calm enough to think about working. You see, I used to not be able to even THINK about working without giving myself a panic attack. Now, nevermind whether I do the work or not, at least I can think about it. Which lead to me actually writing a minuscule amount on Friday (like, literally 1 paragraph). But it improved a bit yesterday. I basically just told myself that hey, you're going to set this timer for 2 hours, where all you're doing is staring at this document for the time being. Doesn't matter if you write nothing, but you're going to be here, doing this. No goals whatsoever. And know what? That got me writing sloppily and horridly for maybe an hour out of the two, where I ended up with 500 words. So I guess that counts as a success?
So this system is kind of working. The meditation is making me calm enough to think about work, which makes me be able to look at work, and the lack of any expectations makes me do actual work. Baby steps once again. Maybe in the future I'll be more efficient with work with actual goals, but right now, anything is better than nothing, and more importantly, the expectation of nothing is what makes this whole thing work.
Yeah...as you can see my noveling is not going so well. And as a result I get more and more anxious and stressed because of it. So I talked to my therapist and he suggested I do some relaxation exercises every day first thing in the morning. Well, I actually find that doesn't really do much first thing in the morning, because I'm generally really relaxed in the morning, but as soon as I think about writing and working I get anxious, which is usually in the afternoon and the like. So I adjusted and decided to do an exercise right before I'm supposed to be working. I started using Headspace, this Apple app, which does 10 min meditations. I've only been doing it for like 3 days, so I'm not sure how effective it is, but I think it's having an effect in that it made me calm enough to think about working. You see, I used to not be able to even THINK about working without giving myself a panic attack. Now, nevermind whether I do the work or not, at least I can think about it. Which lead to me actually writing a minuscule amount on Friday (like, literally 1 paragraph). But it improved a bit yesterday. I basically just told myself that hey, you're going to set this timer for 2 hours, where all you're doing is staring at this document for the time being. Doesn't matter if you write nothing, but you're going to be here, doing this. No goals whatsoever. And know what? That got me writing sloppily and horridly for maybe an hour out of the two, where I ended up with 500 words. So I guess that counts as a success?
So this system is kind of working. The meditation is making me calm enough to think about work, which makes me be able to look at work, and the lack of any expectations makes me do actual work. Baby steps once again. Maybe in the future I'll be more efficient with work with actual goals, but right now, anything is better than nothing, and more importantly, the expectation of nothing is what makes this whole thing work.
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