Valuing the present over procrastination

Sometimes when I am trying to write… the words don’t come.   It weighs on me that it’s due and I think about that more than what I’m trying to write. I become hard on myself for not writing earlier when I had time to be creative and I long for the hour when I can simply have it done. Call it writers cramp, call it procrastination, call it whatever you will but it’s an uncomfortable state of mind that gets worse the longer I leave it.

• “Why didn’t I write those ideas down when they came to me a month ago?”
• “How can I sit down and write when so much else is going on?”
• “I wish I could just blink and it would all be done”
• “Why has this become so hard when normally I love to write?”
• “What if I can’t submit? What if I can’t do this part of my job?”

Those thoughts that I’ve listed above are self-berating and judgemental.  They drag me into the past in which I am full of regret, they wish that the present were different and they catapult me into the future of scary “what-ifs”. Those thoughts are fighting with “what is” and are refusing to accept the universal law of “sometimes things are just hard”.

So what to do? All this ruminating is clearly stopping me from being present. Of course, I could procrastinate a little longer and get lots of other things done but will I be fully attentive to those things that I’m doing? Won’t I just have this writing thing niggling away at the back of my mind the whole time? Hhhmmmm…. sounds torturous. I don’t want to waste my favourite month of December. I am left with only one option acceptable to me and that is to start writing.

And how good it feels to be writing! I can’t believe it; I’m almost at 300 words. It’s not a perfect piece but it’s something.   I also find myself very much in the present and quite focussed whilst I’m writing.  Now that it’s almost done, I can be present to everything I love about this season. The early morning birds, my children getting excited about Christmas, and the prospect of a summer holiday.

May you find a way to be present this December. That will surely guarantee a less exhausted January!