I Work Hard and I Rest A Lot
Sounds pretty healthy, yeah?
Yeah, I thought so too.
This "to-do" list is a lot longer than I remember...
I have a ton of projects, most of which are relatively solitary. And while I make myself work as much as I can, even on days when I have to go to a job that pays the bills, I make a point of not overworking myself.
Am I "not feeling it today"? I'll do a little and then resssssssssst.
Weekend? Resssssssssssst.
Been pulling a lot of shifts at my real job and I'm exhausted? Ressssssssssssst.
No reason to make myself collapse from exhaustion.
The problem is, because the stuff I really care about is all stuff I have to work on in my "free time," when I'm not using that time to be productive I feel guilty about it. I say I want to pursue all of these things - why am I not doing all of them all of the time?
So even when I'm relaxing, I can never feel fully relaxed because there's always so much more that I know I can be doing.
Part of the problem that I'm working on clearing up a little this week - Projectmania: The Theme Park for the Struggling Creative.
I have a lot of ideas
I like most of them too. Naturally, I'd like to follow through on them.
Which means my project list looks more like spaghetti artwork than a responsible "to-do" list.
In an attempt to straighten it out, I sat down recently and worked out how many projects I'm attempting to juggle right now.
There's the revising my novel, the new novel (or novella depending on how it turns out), the preparations for my NaNoWriMo novel, the blog, the play I'm submitting places, the play I'm writing, the other play, the other other play, the other other other play, the graphic novel, the screenplay, the blog, the webseries, the weird film thing, the first secret project, the second secret project, the acting classes, the bad attempts at writing stand up, the auditions, the finding representation, the voice acting, the improv, the song, the...
Probably another fucking thing or two I'm forgetting.
Look at that paragraph. See that paragraph? All of that stuff is weighing down on my consciousness all of the time. And those are just the things I've decided I need to work on - I haven't even begun to show you my massive list of "someday" ideas.
Many of those things up there I haven't even really worked on much.
It's great I have a lot I want to do. The problem is that with a lack of focus, none of them reach anywhere close to completion - or at least, not in a time frame I would like.
And so - in an effort to bring more projects to completion, I've realized I'm going to need to learn to prioritze a handful of them as the ones I am hardcore working on.
Yeah, it'd probably be best to narrow it down to just one and give one hundred percent of my focus to that, but I don't work that way. I have a bit of creative ADD - I need to be juggling multiple projects to stay sane.
I don't, however, need to be juggling a million. I think three or four maaaayyybeee five is a good number to work on at once. I don't know - I need to knuckle down and really truly sort it out instead of whine about it online.
Another unresolved post - seems to be a habit of mine. There's no nice conclusion for me to make because I'm just vomiting up my situation in an attempt to straighten it out in my own head; maybe my predicaments will resonate with you all. Maybe you can offer solutions.
Or maybe we can just commiserate together. Even if we don't figure it out, often it's just nice to know that other people are struggling through the same things you are.