Testing the waters as a newbie - the mental struggle

byAllan-T

267 followers

Updated 5 years ago

So today I woke up, having slept so deeply all night. I reached for the phone and noticed the time was just five minutes past 7 am. I had not written a single blog since I joined WA, I remembered, and the guilt was now beginning to become unbearable. I am running late or procrastinating, I thought to myself. I then also remembered that we were still in the coronavirus lockdown and had no much luck to get out of the house. Usually, my wife would already have left for work by this time of day and kids would still be asleep. Oh, I also remembered that it might be the best time to catch up on my website creation.

So, I stealthily tiptoed to peep through the kids’ bedroom door to confirm I was not merely dreaming, and Woo! they were sound asleep, still well tucked in. I was excited! I felt like a ninja and nearly shouted for joy as I turned around slowly, squinting my eyes as if to scan my environs to confirm my wife was not in the house. I listened for a sound from the kitchen downstairs, but all was quiet and still, except for the random sounds of distant traffic! Woosh! I whispered to myself in celebration, for also I knew that there would be no doing laundry or ironing today.

Once I confirmed that I was the only one awake in the house, I quickly run into the bathroom quietly to steal a quick toilet call and went down the stairs as noiseless as possible. I could hear my own breath and cracking sounds from my knee cups as they struggled to cope with the unusual walk. It was a moment to grab as quickly as possible because I knew it was to last only a short time.

Downstairs, I sat at the dining table with a cup of coffee and flung my laptop open ready to get some website work done. I wanted to write at least a few lines on my blog and was trying to think as quickly and as hard as I could. It was one of the best times of the day to put my ideas to paper since my excuse for not making progress all the while had been “the inevitable domestic distractions”.

I had stopped writing two days ago when my kids had constantly been demanding for one thing after another. It felt guilty not to attend to them, for they are a fruit of my own! I had equally felt guilty to my wife, even without her saying a word to me. I put myself in her position whilst I sat down and not participating in house chores whilst she did the running around especially now that the kids are not going to school. It didn’t settle well with my soul. I stopped writing!

So today, I sat at my laptop with no guilt, no interruptions and only surrounded by blissful silence. An hour later into my writing, I still found myself not able to make any progress. It was frustrating! My brain felt literally thick and blank and as much distracted by my own thoughts as I am normally with the kids around me. The laptop glared at me in the dimness of the spring morning light, as I stared at the A4 paper on which I had scribbled a mind map about my topic of choice but with little progress. It looked stranded! I had the ideas but not the words! I had the passion for writing but not the direction!

I debated whether I was wrong in thinking that I was passionate enough about the topic I had chosen but also braved to ask myself why passion should be a measure of writing about anything. I understand passion to be an excitable feeling about something. Yes! I have the passion for something but then noticed that it is the writing I was excited about but not the subject. Do I have to be excited about the subject? Can I not write when I am sad about something? Can I be different? Slowly in myself I began to feel a sense of anger and defiance to this socially accepted notion, from which I desired to be independent and explore my inadequacies freely.

For me, passionate writing had become a statement of measure and to which my mind constantly felt arrested and trapped. I thus chose to look at it rebelliously than to find an answer to my problem. I wondered if I was wrong, but to be wrong is only an opinion anyone could make about anyone. I asked myself if writers with as much as 100 blogs, each different in subject and themes have at least 100 different passions. At the time, it seemed too difficult for me to interpret but at least, I felt consoled by the ambiguity and spectrum of potential answers in which I know a kind of my own interpretations had a place.

Without thinking about my passion for the subject, I then pondered on my actual ability to write and articulate myself, but which also spiralled into an avalanche of thoughts and internal discourses where I found myself questioned and compared to my past challenges. I remembered the principle that has shaped my life so far; to compare myself to no one competitively but to my own personal failures and achievements as well as to those people I admire and aspire to be. I use them as a measure of my personal endeavour. I then proceed to identify next steps or weaknesses as targets to work on by employing and focusing on what went wrong in similar situations in the past, and what I could have done to make it better.

Luckily, I have previously attended some reflection and reflexology lessons a few years ago which I applied to this internal debate. It was sometime ago when I went for training but I remember that reflection is such an important and powerful tool that many of us don’t realise we have in our control. It is when we take time off our routine to actively engage and direct our mind and thoughts to analyse past experiences or approaches in order to learn and improve.

What reflection has made me realise is that we don’t have to follow the crowd in everything society has modelled. We are our own models and a world of ideas lives in each of us which I believe each of which is a valid subject of exploration. I found this revelation powerful. It helped me to get back in sync with the concept that we all are endowed but differently and individually unique. However, as much as we understand this concept of uniqueness and individuality, we must be consciously aware that we have complete control of our internal strengths, which if we tap and bring to life and apply helps us to face and overcome our goliath.

So this morning, I have chosen to do just that and so far, it has given me some sense of resolve and relief to which I hope to remain focused. Perhaps eventually, my perception and approach to writing will also evolve as I mature in my skills, resilience and a growing network. I know there is research to be done to improve on my writing but for now, I wanted to lament and share my experience of a new blogger’s troubled mind-set.

This being my first post, I thought that sharing today’s emotional journal while I battle with my writing skills will touch someone out there with or without advice for me, either looking to help or to be helped. Please come share with me.

It is now 10:00 am and the kids are awake! Time to get back to being a good dad!

Good luck to you all in your online business.