No, this is the problem.

Michelle Wiener — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 22:14:41 +0000

The past two weeks or so I’ve felt like I was just spinning my wheels, like I was stuck in the mud and nothing was going to get me out of it, or at least nothing I had any real control over. (It always comes back to control, doesn’t it.) I have things I do when I get like this — this is usually when I start cleaning, reorganizing, purging unused/unneeded items from my shelves. Oh, that used to be so much harder to do. I come from a long line of I’m SURE That Will Come In Handy Someday-ers. And there are still things that I hold on to for a lot longer than necessary, and it is true that occasionally I will find a use for some of those things, and that seems to justify the piles of crap I keep around, but I have also learned how satisfying it can be to take something I’ve kept around for no good reason, something like, say, the biker jacket I used to wear that I couldn’t bear to part from even though I haven’t worn it in at least four years, but now look at and say, “I have no reason to keep this around. I shall donate it to X charity,” and put it in the Discard pile. Or to take an entire shelf of books left over from graduate school that I have not looked through since 2003 but have kept around anyway because you never know — and put them all in a box to take to the nearest used bookstore. I have two whole empty shelves now. That feels good.

And the control I exert over my belongings also feels good and there have been times (I think ultimately this is one of those times, but spoilers) when that’s been enough to clear my head so I can get on with the creative work I want to do, only . . . it wasn’t enough this time. Or this week. So earlier today I wrote something on the Tumblr wondering if the people who follow me have different tricks they use to get out of ruts and the people who responded (yay them!) said things like “Read! Go for a walk!” and I was all, “I did go for a walk! And all I do is read porn! Not helping!” — though really, it did help, because casting a line out in the ether and getting a bite ALWAYS HELPS. It really always does. Even a “like” on Facebook or Tumblr makes me happy because it means I am not alone. (All right, yeah, OK, I know I’m not alone. But the reminders help.)

And then I remembered a post I’d read a week or so ago — yes, on Gretchen Rubin’s blog, I think she’s fantastic and you need to read her book/blog/twitter/etc. — on Identifying The Problem. Her post involved something tangible, while mine — this rut! — was more nebulous, but I took a few quiet moments this afternoon to really think about what it is that’s keeping me from doing what I keep telling people I want to do (and, frankly, what I’m paying money to do). And here’s what I came up with, in a nutshell (except, of course, this is me, so you’re getting the long version. The cracked nut version):

I’m more concerned with doing something well than doing it at all. I have always had this issue. If I wasn’t good at something, like, immediately, then I didn’t want to do it. While I’ve gotten over that, at least to the point that I do give new things a solid effort before determining that I either don’t like them or it’s not for me, and I think I’ve gotten a lot better about try-try-againing, there is still a heavy soul-crushing, shame-making feeling that if I don’t think I’m going to do something supremely excellently like bowl you over WOW I can’t believe a mere mortal accomplished this etc etc etc, then why the hell bother. I know I’ve written about this before.

But there’s something more. There’s also this nagging feeling that if I don’t do something well — by which I mean up to my ridiculous standards (standards, I might add, that I don’t really hold anyone else to), then people aren’t going to like me. If I screw something up, even something small, people will laugh at me. And I still think one of the worst things you can do to someone (barring acts of hate/violence, of course) is maliciously, from a point of presumed superiority, laugh at them (this is, btw, one of the reasons why no matter how tempting it is, I am not going to go into any great detail about the sometimes, no, often, really bad genre fiction I read, because someone did take the time to write it and yeah, someone should have taken the time to edit it maybe, but, you know, feelings are good). It is very important for me to be liked. Respected, even. I can take criticism and I am generally OK with not being liked but there will always be a part of me that doesn’t understand why (I call this part of me my Inner Bubbe). In the past I would’ve gone out of my way to try to get that person to like me, but now (and again, I really think it’s the Internet responsible for my personal growth) I’m better equipped to just let it go. But it will still nag at me.

And so I will not do something at all because I am too afraid that it won’t go well enough and then people won’t like me. THAT IS MY PROBLEM. And I need to focus all of my attention on getting the HELL OVER IT.

Also, I need to watch this fantastic video by Ze Frank again:

And again and again and again, until I can’t get “where the fuck do ideas come from?” out of my head. Because this is ALSO a problem I have, that I don’t think I have any good ideas and I am desperately envious of people who seem to be able to pull fantastic ideas out of absolutely nothing, while I struggle to put two words together in a way that I kinda sorta like but think I could do better.

But first things first — I’m just going to check this over briefly for embarrassing typos and then send it off into the world, as the first step in my latest experiment: Don’t Think, Just Write.

Check it, I’m posting by phone

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No, this is the problem.