We all experience this from time to time, even if we’re not writers. It’s just that for the writer there is no faking it. If you’re not into writing at the moment, forcing it usually results in material that’s not worth publishing. For the carpenter there are most likely days in which he may not feel like going to work. Yet he can still force his body to go through the motions, but he won’t do his best work. For people in sales, motivation is a constant challenge because some days we’re just on it, and others we can barely pick up the phone.
The funny thing is that when we have those writer’s block days we tend to let them stress us out. It’s as if we feel doom and gloom because we suddenly can’t do what we always do, even though we’ve had this challenge before and always came through. The writer regains her clarity, the carpenter wakes up feeling energized and ready to meet the day, and the salesman walks into the office with a spring in his step.
It’s at just that moment in time when we’re in the grip of writer’s block that we can’t see past our current malaise to know that this feeling will soon pass.
As an alternative, what if we do like Bruce Lee and be like water, as he once famously wrote, “Water can flow, or creep, or drip, or crash. Be water my friend.” Water fills the shape in which it’s contained. It can flow around obstacles, follow the course of a river, and over time it can grind boulders into sand.
I don’t experience writer’s block very often, but I just did. It lasted two days. For two long days I felt like I didn’t know what to do with myself, and yes the doom and gloom of the “what if’s” seeped in. Then today I wrote this blog post and so much more.
Truth be told, the doom and gloom portion was short lived. What I mostly did was a lot of nothing, a little yard work, watched a few movies, paid some bills, cooked an amazing meal, spent time with family and so on. I breathed into this time and gave myself permission to simply relax. Now the day that I write this post my fingers on the keyboard are generating a great deal of content and I’m back in the flow.
Considering the alternative of forcing myself to do what did not feel right at the time, that it wasn’t the right time to do my creative work, I’m much the better and wiser for giving myself the permission to breath.
