Getting the Fear

There's this thing that I do, and I've done it for a long time now. Well actually, it's something I don't do. But anyway. Here's the thing.

Sometimes when I'm faced with a piece of work, I won't do it. I'll do anything but. I'll make a cup of tea, go to the loo, surf the web, check my emails, surf the web some more... you get the picture. When I was a software engineer I would do all these things rather than write software. When I'm Being A Writer, it's the writing I'm avoiding. I do it a LOT, and it drives me mad.

The only significant insight I've had about it is that it's about fear. If I try and force myself to do the thing I'm avoiding doing, I start getting all the symptoms of anxiety. I seem to be terrified of making a mess of it, so rather than risk that, I avoid doing it at all.

The only surefire cure I've ever come up with is gritting my teeth and getting on with it. And the irony is that when I finally do get on with it, I feel immensely better. But still, after doing a chunk of work and feeling better, I go away from my desk for a piss or whatever, and then when I return... it starts all over again.

Here are some not-very-helpful facts:

1. Despite knowing that doing the work makes me feel better, and despite having this proved time and again, I still can't make myself do it.

2. Despite being apparently fearful that what I produce will be utter rubbish, I've had it proved to me many times that I do NOT produce rubbish. I'm actually rather good at the work that I do. And to further compound this apparent conundrum, once I've finished a piece of work and offered it to the world, I rarely have insecurity about what people think of it. I know I've done my best, and if they don't like it, well, not everyone can like everything, can they?
So why the hell am I so paralysingly terrified of producing poor work at the start of the process?

3. My brain is a wily beast. The process is rarely conscious. I don't think to myself in the morning, "Oh my God, the prospect of work is terrifying me so I'm going to do something else instead." No, I just quietly think, "Ah yes, here we are on another day. Good. I'll get to that in a minute. I just want to..." As the day wears on I become more and more aware that I haven't actually done any work yet, and more and more convinced that I will, in a minute, just after I've... whatever. Although the fear and the desperation does become less subconscious and more bloody apparent as the hours tick by (and takes the form of an internal dialogue: "For heaven's sake, just do some work!" "No. Don't want to." "But it'll make you feel better." "No no no, I won't I won't." "But why?" "Lalala, I can't hear you...").

It's number 3 that's the bugger. People have made various suggestions to me over the years, for ways I might beat this thing. Little exercises I could do, or incentives I could offer myself, all of which would be fine if I were consciously avoiding work, rather than believing wholeheartedly that there isn't really a problem and I am about to start work any minute.

And yes, if I'm honest that's been my major problem so far this week. I'm supposed to be working, and I'm not. And it's making me miserable. Although, hyperanalytical being that I am, I don't know whether my non-workingness is as much a symptom of some deeper malaise as it is the cause of the malaise... argh. Going round in circles.

So anyway, here's the thing: I will feel better if I do some work. But I'm not doing any work. So how can I make myself do some work?

That thing mentioned in number three above, that denial of the problem, coupled with this very deep-rooted urge to avoid doing work at any cost, has made me less than effective at putting people's suggestions into action in the past. But here's my promise: If you make suggestions to me, of ways I might beat this thing, I will promise to try VERY HARD to implement them, and not do that other thing I do, of being all superior and thinking things like "Pah, heard that one before, I don't need to do that and anyway it'll never work". I will pick one suggestion per day, and do it. And see if I can find something that works, that I can use again in the future. Or maybe just a whole bag of tricks that I can try one at a time every time I get stuck in one of these ruts.

But for now, I'm going to go back to the one I normally use, which works, eventually, for a bit: I'm going to grit my teeth and bloody well get on with it.

I'll just make myself a cup of tea...


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