February 2015, that’s the last time I wrote to you. Four months…four l-o-n-g months have passed and I have sent nothing! Why? Why not? Why is that so? Writer’s Block! To some extent this is true but not writer’s block in the form of not having ideas or creative insights. For mine is a rich, active and colourful mind – full of pictures and musings and reflections. I even write them down, brainstorm them, mindmap them, draw them…but when I get to thinking about turning them into a blog – a newsletter – something to be of value – to you, I close up. I block myself and my flow.
The pain of perfectionism … putting myself under pressure to re-write, re-shape, re-create, be funny, be powerful, be of value and of use to others and by the time I’ve finished editing and re-editing, my writing is the bare essence of what I started with and ends up as something else that I think I “should be” saying.
So, I went for a walk just now, in this windy, wondrous weather and all the while I walked I thought of you and the cobwebs blew away and when I returned to my desk, I sat down immediately to write.
No starting and stopping this time … just starting and flowing and here they are … my words… in flow. My attempt to free myself, an outpouring, un-edited onto a page to loosen the blockage and you know what…it feels good and I can breathe easier and my pencil flies along the page.
“No more”, I say to myself. “Never again, no never again”, will I write and re-write and re-write so many times that I end up saying nothing at all!
Paralysed by perfection!
So now, my new commitment is to flow and allow my thoughts and ideas and learnings and insights to be freed onto the page, and into the world.
Now, it’s out of me and definitely off my shoulders and off my mind, because it’s been hanging, heavily there for four months now, with my …
“I have to, I must, I need to”
And now, after a walk, and a re-commitment to doing…
It’s done!
So, here’s to progress not perfection!
And for you … I wish a blank page, an open space and a wind to blow your cobwebs away. I wish you the chance to start something that you are blocking.
I wish you the freedom to create with no pursuit of perfection.
Enjoy doing that.
Bí chomh iontach is atá ar do chumas. Be the Best You Can Be.
Nadine