Capable, Not Committed
Walking towards my desk, I feel the excitement. A new editing program to tackle has me all a-twitter. There’s also my second novel that needs to be sketched out. Either way, it’s going to be a great writing day.
Once I open my laptop, I start opening tabs, locating the files, then fumble through the vertical file to my left for my notes. I’ll probably need the draft of the first novel, too. The desk calendar falls into my line of vision and – uh-oh – time for my next Substack post. Are those my new watercolor pencils over there?
The pattern is familiar by now. I woke up knowing I wanted to start editing my rough draft. The plan was to stop before I get tired of that, and then start on the planning for my next novel. There’s time for it all. No one gets left out. Leaving before I time out means I won’t burnout. At least, that’s the plan.
I want to work on my editing, but planning out the second book would be more fun. The Substack post would need more brain cells than I’m prepared to give at the moment, although doing it now would be better time management. How did I overlook that yesterday when I was constructing this plan? That stress is easily quenched by reaching for the watercolors. I catch myself mid-reach.
Here I go. I’m redoing my plans for the day. Trying to decide what I should do, what I want to do, and what needs to be done. Starting over, drifting and returning to all the beautiful systems I’d planned. It doesn’t feel like avoidance. It feels like consideration.
No one tells you this can become a problem. If I can do anything, then I can do any thing. Now the problem is choosing.
I trust I can succeed at multiple paths, so the urgency disappears. If everything is available, nothing is required. Here’s where I’m dangerously close to losing the day.
When choosing one path, there’s a quiet loss I feel for the other not chosen. Both could be done well, so it wasn’t fear of failing. Closing doors I know I can walk through is habit. I always want to feel capable.
The motion without the commitment continues. I keep tweaking the planner, adjusting the calendar. Refining the systems over and over and finally starting over again. I like movement. I don’t like decisions.
Drifting from plans I’ve already built, and restarting instead of continuing means I’m always tracking, optimizing, and rethinking. All this motion tricks my brain into thinking I’m actually doing the thing. The original plan was great, if I had just worked the plan.
I wasn’t stuck because I didn’t know what to do. I was stuck because I knew too many ways to do it.
The redoing and restarting may look like progress, but the diluted effort is really just lost time. Never testing one path long enough becomes a subtle erosion of trust in myself. Subtle because nothing collapses, it just never fully gets built.
Once I look long enough, I begin to see that my capability is real. My range of skills is real. My adaptability is real. However, being able to do many things is not the same as doing one thing well over time, or even doing it at all.
Freedom in my retirement to do whatever I want to do felt like the reward for being capable throughout my career. I thought freedom would make the work easier. It sure made it harder to begin. That’s what caused the drift.
I didn’t stall because I wasn’t capable. I stalled because I was.
At some point, even freedom starts to need form.
What I needed was commitment.
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I used to switch between writing and editing three different books. Then I realized how much time I wasted jumping between them and getting reoriented, so I focused on getting the first one done, and then the second.
I've run into a similar problem with my social media. Now I plan to use Friday as my social media day (Pinterest, Instagram, etc.) I can write my Substack post and schedule it for later. Monday through Thursday is reserved for writing in the morning, email and admin tasks in the afternoon. Any distracting idea gets jotted down in the appropriate section of my notes to come back to later.