Do you ever get in your own head about an idea you have?
Sorry, what I meant was: Do you ever get in your own head about literally each tiny particle of every single thing you’ve ever even begun to consider thinking about doing and then spiral into a deep chasm of self-doubt that covers everything from your career path to the time you told Brent Spiner to his literal face that you once wrote self-insert fan fiction where you were Data’s daughter as an eight year old???
Cool, me neither.
Ok, so sometimes some of those things in the preceding paragraph could have possibly been me.
I should start by saying that even though I caught a bad case of blogger imposter syndrome, I’m still very solid in my decision to be a Monomom, and have taken a ton of positive steps in my long hiatus from writing here. So that’s good!
I think what happened was that I got overwhelmed, which is a very common thing for me, and I suspect a common thing for a lot of people who are undertaking a new solo project. And, to be fair, this is sort of two solo projects wrapped into one. Blog and Baby. Baby Blog. Blogbaby.
And while I absolutely get that I’m not a special unicorn in my propensity to get overwhelmed with new ventures, I will confess to having a very specific brand of overwhelm, that I wonder if other quote-unquote “Artists” might find familiar: I feel like my feelings of overwhelm are less to do with the imagined visual of an avalanche of tasks ahead of me, but rather the ocean of ideas - great ideas! - that come tumbling out all at once in the genesis phase, much too fast for me to translate from my gut to the page.
Ok, that sounds like some bizarre form of bragging. “I’m, like, so overwhelmed by my genius that I’m exhausted and must remove myself from the act of creating for my mental health.” *sips martini mixed with the tears of people working 9-5 jobs
That’s not exactly what I mean. And not just because anyone today who gets to work ONLY 9-5 is, I’m pretty sure, living the sweet life and not a part of the disgusting overwork most Americans are forced into to barely cover rent these days. But, excuse me, my socialism is showing. *sips martini mixed with the tears of the rich, who I have just eaten.
I think what I really mean is that I frequently start a new project and have a burst of creativity. A burst that looks like a gush! A gush that splats onto a feverishly-typed Google Doc titled “Ideas!” (with the exclamation point, bien sûr), full of bullet-points and indented bullet points that are fun shapes, and things like “Oh! Maybe it’s about blah blah, too!” It’s thrilling!
THRILLING! And exhausting. All of this stuff gushes (gosh, I hope people like that word as much as I do today) right out of my brain into words, or fragments of words with lots of gusto and not a lot of organization. Which is fine! This is the brainstorming phase, right? The storm is made up of the flashes of inspiration lightning and the scattered raindrops of bits of details (Ah ha! The moment you thought you were safe, the gushing is back!). But, honestly, all that inspiration really does make you feel like you need a cigarette afterwards.
So then it’s time for the next step: taking the gu- the cascade (happy?) and directing it out into big old aquifers to maximize the efficiency of the flow. See, now I’ve stumbled into a commercially accepted metaphor: flow.
Flow, according to some white dude productivity experts, is what happens when you enter a state of fairly effortless production, where the major roadblocks of decision-making and problem-solving and other noun-verbing combinations are mastered, and you can just sail into the zen-like gulf of Nike: Just Doin’ It.
So: flow! It ain’t just the aunt that fucks up my life once a month, but a fairly rad place for creative-types to find themselves. When the words just pour, or the paint just glides, or the batter just blends. I truly think this is the ecstasy of creation; the only thing that gets us past the messy phases, other than the promise of external validation in the form of applause, which comes much later (whoops, now my Leo is showing).
But, like many of us in Texas just recently learned, water-management items, aka pipes, are designed for certain conditions. If you exceed those conditions, you’re not going to be able to avoid the (I’M SORRY, BUT I MUST)... gush. If the gush of creative flow exceeds your pipes’ capacity, you’re gonna get wet, and not in the fun way. And, think about it: what happens to the water that escapes the pipes? It sure as shit doesn’t get back into the water system!
(Ok, this can no longer be ignored: I know fuck-all about how water utilities work, much like the elected officials in Texas OH SHIT SHE MAD. If you couldn’t tell a few paragraphs back by my casual use of the word “aquifers” that I have legit not thought about systemic water management since I took World History in high school and had a six-week unit on the Roman Empire. So, like, don’t write to me about how aKsHuLly water never escapes the system bc blah blah mansplaination stuff reasons. I don’t give a fuck. I’m using the beautiful SAT skill of metaphor to explain my fairly abstract feelings about water. Wait, no, this is about creativity. Shit... my metaphor is getting away from me. Ok, let’s focus up:)
So, stay with me: you’re standing in your kitchen, sloshing around in 2 inches of water because your pipe system couldn’t handle the flow of water coming in. What happens to that water? You call Stanley Steamer to come in a suck that shit out, right after you sing the theme song one million times in your head. And the water that escaped? Fucking gone. Lost. Poof!
And, class, let’s return to the top and see what the water was in this metaphor?
IDEAS! Creativity! Inspiration!
Ah, shit! We lost it. Loss dot JPEG. We lost it because we didn’t have the systems in place to handle the occasional, but not completely unprecedented, surges. Ugh... I could have been using the word surges this whole time, and then I maybe I wouldn’t have added a 42 pack of assorted Gushers to my Amazon cart ten minutes ago... C’est la vie: write and learn.
So, anyway, this sort of seems like I’m softening you all up to buy my Patented Artist Aquifer 28-Day Productivity System, but that’s not it... yet. Look, who knows what I’ll be called to do in the sugar rush of 42 packs of Gushers? Refined sugar is a helluva drug. But what I’m really trying to do is... well... say...
I’M SORRY I DIDN'T WRITE FOR SO LONG!
Not to you, really, my dear reader. I don’t exactly have a readership yet, haha. How does it feel to not exist yet? I’m still in the not not telling people about my mama plans, but also not screaming it from my personal SM pages yet, so my promotional activities have been fairly limited.
No. I’m mostly sorry to myself.
HA! Joke’s on you: you thought I was apologizing, but you forgot that I am a Leo. How could you have forgotten that, I literally just fucking said it, gotdamn.
But I am, alas. I'm a Leo and I’m sorry to me. And to be honest this is pretty big, because I’m just as reticent to apologize to myself as I am to anyone else. But I’m in big time therapy, and I think I owe myself an apology for putting so much pressure on myself. I let a fun and great idea get too big for my particular britches because I expected a level of perfection that just isn’t possible or fun.
So, that’s it, I guess? I’m attempting to hold myself accountable by being honest about the personal blocks that have kept me away from here. I really do have a lot of fun things to share! I’ve peed on some sticks! I’ve made a gargantuan baby name list! I’ve navigated the US healthcare system!
Ok, that last one was Not Fun(TM). But, don’t worry, I make traumatic events hilarious to hear about.
And THAT’S why I’m in big time therapy.
*sips martini made with my own tears after seeing my deductibles.
Welcome back, me. The water's fine.
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