I have a bad habit.
No, it's not my growing caffeine addiction. No, I'm not talking about all the crap food I've been eating either. Nor am I talking about starring at Reddit on my phone at 2am and wondering why my insomnia is getting worse.
Ok, I have multiple bad habits, but most of them tie back into the thing I want to talk about today. So let's just pretend I have only one bad habit for now.
I'm talking about my habit of neglecting myself. It's taken me a long time to really accept that I do this, despite my counsellor telling me constantly for more than eight years of semi-regular check ins that I need to take more self-care time. The reason I'm finally acknowledging this, and the reason I'm writing about it on a website I designated to be all about writing, is because after a mini-break down last week I've noticed how it influences my work in a vicious cycle that needs to be broken.
The cycle goes like this.
I'll take some time and get myself in order. I'll eat well, I'll get in plenty of exercise, and I'll take the time to look after my mental well-being through meditation and just giving myself the space to breath, generally while there's no big projects going on (or just after something has happened that I feel gives me permission to be lazy for a little while).
Since I'm feeling so good, I start to write, because writing is my passion and always has been. I fall into a flow state easily, and have a few days of impressive productivity. Inevitably, because I am an ambitious person by nature, I'll decide on a new project to begin, because I feel like I have all the time in the world and can accomplish so much in a single day that I need something more to fill the time.
Then... Things go bad. I get so focused on putting everything I have into that goal, that everything else kind of gets forgotten. I stop having time to walk, time to cook well, time to really do anything BUT that project. I get utterly obsessive about it. Which works wonders if it's a short project I can smash out in a day of full commitment - but like holding your breath, it isn't sustainable for more than occasional short bursts.
So after a few days of letting everything else fall to the side, telling myself I'll pick it all up again once the project is done, I start to fall apart. I start feeling like I don't have enough time in the day, I start feeling like I'm just not good enough. My mental health, already on the more fragile side from two decades of dealing with depression, starts to fall. All the while I'm telling myself that all I need is to just put more work in, to become more obsessive, to just get the thing finished faster, because it's always been once the thing is done that I go back to "normal life".
Inevitably though, the project then fails. I burn out. I have a breakdown of some kind, or something external happens to force me to stop. Then I find myself incredibly reluctant to return to the project I'd been working on, because something in me knows what I was doing wasn't healthy and warns me away from it. Until I get myself together again, and start some new fresh project - and send myself into it all over again.
The Challenge
Over the past few weeks, I set myself a challenge of writing a full draft of a novel in under a month.
In theory, I'm more than capable of this. I can write fast. I've clocked my typing speed at over 100 words per minute before, and I've had almost five years more practice since then. At that speed a 70,000 word novel should take about 12 hours of typing. Realistically I average about 72 words per minute, but that's still only about two days typing required. Mathematically, getting that done in under a month should be easy.
The math doesn't account for the fact I'm human though. In practice, this challenge has gone exactly through the cycle above - I had one good week of great progress (easily hitting my goal of 8k written in four days, despite some major disruptions). Then the following week I started to struggle, getting myself caught up in doubts and second guessing myself, and although I got thousands of words on the page it was all the same section of story over and over again, and all of it immediately deleted, all while my partner grew increasingly frustrated with me about falling behind on housework and not being present.
This week, when I intended to "catch up" started out with almost two full days of extreme anxiety and stress that forced me to walk away from the keyboard. Until I took the time, with some prompting, to sit and reflect and get my mind into order. We cleaned the house, had a good meal, got a few things like meal planning out of the way, and I took a good walk with a good audiobook.
Then I sat down and had one of the easiest and most productive writing sessions I've had all month.
Clearly, the evidence points to the idea that I do much better work, and am far more productive, when I take the time to look after myself first vs when I just focus entirely on being productive. Coming to my work with a healthy, clear mind. Taking that time to just look after myself.
It seems painfully obvious when I write it out like that, like it's ridiculous not to have realised earlier, yet I don't think I'm alone in self-care activities being the first to go out the window when I feel under the pump. Taking half an hour to sit and meditate, or just chill and watch a series you enjoy, or reading a book, or even taking some time to properly groom yourself (trimming my beard so I don't look like a homeless man is a big one for me) are all things it's easy to think "I don't have time for this right now."
Yet, in reality, doing those things is essential to get the most out of your time. If taking half an hour to meditate lets me write two chapters in the following hour, while skipping the meditation and putting all my time into writing only gets one and a half chapters done, then the real time waste is the attempt at being super productive.
So I'm writing this for two reasons. The first is to put these thoughts in public, which will make them more real for me and help me affirm to myself the importance of changing this habit.
Secondly, it's because I know many of my friends are also writers, and I hope that some day this site is seen by other young writers looking to get their life together like me. I want to encourage you to take a moment and consider if you're doing everything you can to care for yourself first, both physically and mentally.
If you're interested in more on exactly HOW to go about looking after yourself, a friend of mine has recently started up a blog talking broadly about the subject, specifically her own journey in trying to take better care of herself while living with chronic pain and illness. Click here to check it out.