Enough is Enough

I feel like a time waster deluxe.

This feeling causes me to feel a lot of inner stress, which causes me to do things that allow Denial to start running the show in my head so that I can relive the inner stress, which as you know wastes even more time.  Steven Pressfield in his book The War of Art calls this thing Resistance.

The things I do while I'm in Denial mostly involve food, or if I'm not using food for comfort, I turn to a screen.  Any screen will do:  my phone, the television, or a computer.  It's easy to forget about Important Things I need to do when I'm not thinking about Important Things I need to do. Sometimes Denial takes the form of reading yet another self-help book.  I have piles and piles of those waiting for me to start, finish, or re-read.

Denial is a great stress reliever...until...Reality gives you a swift kick in the pants and yells in your face like a mean drill instructor at boot camp.

Things like:

"YOU ARE WASTING PRECIOUS TIME!"
"YOU ARE SMARTER THAN THIS!"
"YOU ARE BETTER THAN THIS!"
"WHAT IS YOUR PROBLEM?!"

Reality is really the words I yell in my own mind, and am mean to myself like this sometimes, which is self-defeating.  Another self-defeating thing I do goes like this:

On Monday I say to myself, "I'll do that [fill-in-the-blank with any Important Thing] on the weekend when I have more time."
On Saturday I say to myself, "I'll do that [Important Thing] in the mornings during the week when I have more time."

The weeks, and then the weekends, fly by lightening fast like always and no Important Things get done.  (Writing is one of the Important Things.)

This rolling pattern of never-ending procrastination causes my chest to seize up when I have the courage to acknowledge it.  This can't be good for my mental, emotional, or physical health and it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure that out.

This cycle of perpetual procrastination about Important Things has to stop so I set some goals this year with the help of some friends and Michael Hyatt so I could have my Best Year Ever.

Writing and posting a blog once a week is one of my goals for 2015.

This blog is me drawing a line in the sand and saying Enough is Enough.

The truth is I am afraid.  I am afraid of writing the wrong thing, or saying it the wrong way.  I'm deathly afraid of saying I Am A Writer because that would change everything if it were true because writer's write actual words and publish them.  I am currently in the process of writing a book, for crying out loud!  Maybe after it's published I'll stop being afraid of saying I Am A Writer, but probably not.

So far, most of my words have either stayed in my head (which causes me no end of all of the above nonsense) or get written longhand in notebooks where they are never read again, not even by me.  I have stacks and stacks of those notebooks, which I am even more deathly afraid of cracking open and reading.  Afraid of the contents of my heart that they will reveal.