An Almost Anonymous Blog

Priorities

I hate writing posts like this because I feel that it comes across as me whining about how I can't think of anything to write / not feeling creative, etc. I suppose that's exactly what I'm doing, but what I mean is that I don't know if people want to read that. But I'm sitting in front of my computer at work, and I don't have my journal with me to work through some stuff, so here we are.

I often go through "creative ruts", as I like to call them. I imagine a lot of other people do as well, but Mr. Imposter Syndrome tells me I'm the only one.1 Even though I know that I will work my way out of it one way or another, it still makes me feel crummy when I'm in one of these parts of the creative cycle.

To give you an idea of what I'm holding back on, I have these projects:

I'm about ready to give up on all of those (except for blog posts!). I can give you some thoughts on each of them as to why I want to quit.

Epilepsy Essays

I have no momentum going with these essays. Yeah, I have quite a few written already. That's great. There's another essay I still need to add research notes to; and I'd like to write something about "interictal" states which led me to increase some of my meds last month.

But I haven't touched anything with these since February. Probably a month ago now. The more I let it sit, the easier it is to give up on it and not finish the project. I can easily tell myself, "it's too big! I bit off more than I can chew."

The Album Project

I've completed one episode of an unknown number of parts. I have a lot of music still to listen to but I'm consumed by podcasts and currently an audio book. When do I have time to listen to these albums and take notes? Let alone sit down and record an hour-long podcast.

Well, they don't have to be an hour in length; that's just how long the first one turned out to be. That's how long I usually make my music podcasts. I've figured out what the ideal amount of songs tends to be to get to this length, so it's not hard for me to get there. It takes me longer than an hour to produce, though.

But this one, yeah it's about time. I don't have the time to do this. Super easy to quit.

Book Review Podcast

I alternate between being excited about recording a podcast (my two favourite episodes so far have been "Unreconciled" and "The Caves of Steel") and dreading it.

Excited: I have fun recording podcasts and talking about books.

Dreading: Feeling bound to the podcast like I "have" to release regular episodes means reading turns from an enjoyable hobby to a job.

I tend to default to "dreading" mode. When that happens, I sometimes think that I could instead write reviews. But then Mr. Imposter Syndrome rears his head and reminds me that I'm terrible at writing reviews (he does this for my music blog, too, by the way). So I don't get around to even starting.

Back in September, I recorded three episodes in one session and in the first one stated my intention to release episodes as "seasons" - I'd record Fall through Spring, and use the Summer to do nothing but read and take notes. The third episode came out, and then...I dropped off. Didn't record anything. I kept reading though!

But it's hard to pick back up after leaving it for so long.

Looking back at what I've typed out, I see a lot of flimsy excuses. Most of these can be solved by just doing the work. I read a note today about motivation:

Thinking about the simple layout - by realjame2

In it realjame suggests to "just visit your project". He gives multiple suggestions in that regard: open up your blog, your code editor, physically touch whatever it is you're working on. That kind of thing.

I like this idea. I think it has a lot of merit. Am I going to follow through on it and visit some of these projects today? Maybe not, but possibly in the near future. I'm always reading, so that helps with my book podcast anyway.

Oh, I titled this post "priorities" but didn't even talk about priorities. I'm not sure where I intended to go with that, perhaps the idea was thinking through what I want to prioritize first among those unfinished projects. So what are my priorities?

Honestly, probably the book podcast. There's a recent book I read that I really liked, and have a lot of annotations saved. That's a good one to start with. And then maybe try to touch on my essay project again.

Hey, this was helpful for me. If you read this far, thank you. I hope that I can reverse some of my thoughts of quitting my projects and get some work done.

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  1. You may find that Mr. Imposter Syndrome wears many hats. Making you doubt your own talents and skills is simply his chief occupation.↩

  2. I found out about realjame through a random interaction on Mastodon - after I shared this post by pcalv.es. realjame is an 18-year-old high school senior and has a really neat looking website. Well-designed, and he's done some fun things like make it capable of loading on a Nintendo DSi. Wonderful to see such fun ideas coming from today's youth!↩

#creativity #reflection