Checking in and Course Correcting
I’ve been in a funk for a while. As I said in my Last Post, I tried writing a couple of blog tober entries, but they came out sounding whiny and bitchy. The other day, my brain put a couple of things together, and a Joycean-level epiphany struck me out of nowhere.
Last weekend was supposed to be Slipstream weekend. Of course, I was going to be a bit bummed. I worked hard on that event. I’d been excited about it. It hurt when I had to cancel it. Even though my conscious mind didn’t remember, my subconscious mind was going to muck about with my moods.
This post isn’t about Slipstream though.
This post is about moods and emotions. It’s about checking in with what’s going on. It’s about giving ourselves room to feel what we need to feel. It’s about taking stock of what we’re doing, our plans, and the necessity of course correcting.
One of the most important lessons I’ve learned in therapy is that we cannot control our emotions. At least not all the time. We can regulate our body’s reaction through practice and training period we can choose how we react to our emotions. But, we cannot completely control our responses to external stimuli or to our thoughts.
This leads me to one of the most important tools in managing mental health. Whenever I’m hit with any kind of extreme emotion, I ask myself, is this level of emotion appropriate to my current situation? I’m really good about this with sharp anger and deep sadness. With being bummed, sometimes it can take me a bit to get to this kind of thinking, but eventually, I’ll get around to asking myself about it.
Checking in with yourself is vital.
Giving yourself the freedom to feel is vital.
Giving yourself permission and freedom to feel does not equate to wallowing in the emotion. At some point, we gotta figure out healthy regulation and get back to getting on with life. Sometimes getting on with life means changing up some of the things that we focused on previously. Sometimes those things aren’t healthy anymore. Sometimes we bite off more than we can chew. Sometimes those things are affected by events outside of our control. It’s all about checking in, asking questions, and noticing what’s really going on.
So… With that in mind… I’m calling it quits on Blogtober.
It’s not serving me in any way other than Adding stress and distracting me from other writing I need to be doing. I’m not having much fun with trying to come up with yet another filler post that doesn’t really make any kind of difference to anyone, least of all myself. As I said, I have a couple of really bitchy posts that are just me kvetching because life is hard right now.
Sometimes, it’s important to stop something that we originally thought was a good thing, but then turns out to be anything but. This year, blog tober went downhill really fast.
I’m reminded of the old chestnut, “Winners never quit.” Well, maybe. Perhaps it depends on the perspective. While I’m not going to keep banging my head against Blogtober, I don’t consider quitting as much as I consider it redirecting my energy, effort, and creativity in different directions. I’ll still be writing, probably with greater productivity because I’ll be writing things that excite me, engage me, and will eventually lead to making money, (I hope.)
The basic point to all of this is: sometimes we need to take stock of what’s going on check in with ourselves, and make sure the things we’re doing add to the overall trajectory of our journey towards success, rather than detract from it.
Recently, Marvel Studios did the same kind of thing with their overall plans for the MCU. They course-corrected on their entire Disney+ show lineup in general. In specific, rumor has it that Kevin Fahey looked over footage from Daredevil: Born Again, and scrapped everything; writers and directors got fired, and they are starting everything over fresh.
If Marvel can course-correct when something isn’t working for them, that’s good enough for me, maybe it should be good enough for you too. So, after everything, between my mood, life events, and what I’m looking for out of my writing, Blogtober wasn’t a failure, but an experiment that led me to know what’s really important to me in the here and now with my writing. While this decision doesn’t’ fix everything going on, it does take some of the stress away.
