What Do You Do When Everything Is Going Wrong?

Have you ever had those days that no matter how hard you try to focus on completing something you can’t?  Instead of being able to accomplish what you set out to, you end up sitting in frustration watching the seconds turn to minutes, and god forbid the minutes turn to hours, with each passing moment adding to your frustration.

Over the past year this blog has “allowed” me to experience this type of frustration on many occasions and at many different levels ;~) 

Why not just not write when you are feeling like this, you may ask? For the most part I try not to but sometimes those hours can turn into a day or two and then I feel the pressure to get back to it.  You have made commitment to taking time out of your busy day to read what I write, so as a writer I feel a commitment to providing quality content for you to read.J 

Don’t worry though I have adapted some writing techniques over the past year of blogging to help avoid these frustrations as much as possible.  When I first starting blogging I would just sit down and expect “genius” to flow onto the screen.  Writing like becomes work and not enjoyable very quickly because creating the post becomes ten times as hard as it should be and instead of “genius” the quality of the content is just decent. 

To help avoid these frustrations I have adapted two techniques.  First, I try to keep at least one post ahead so on the days I can’t write I don’t have to but I can keep up my posting schedule.  The other technique is I have changed my writing process.  Instead of just sitting down to write a whole post at once, I now write a post in three iterations, taking a break away from the post between each of the iterations. 

First, I sit down and get all my thoughts and ideas down on the page.  The final result of this stage I call my “idea skeleton” because it forms the basic structure of the future post.  To most this skeleton would be gibberish, but the goal isn’t readability, it is just getting my thoughts out.  I try to have a bank of these “skeletons” so I create them anytime I come up with an idea for a post.  The second stage I sit down and start crafting the rough draft of the post by linking the thoughts together and trying to add some flow.  After another “break” from the post I come back with a fresh mind, do the final proof read, and publish it. 

These two techniques have helped a lot with reducing those frustrating times of sitting and staring but there are still sometimes I sit down to create the draft and the words just won’t flow, thus the frustrations start to come back.

I experienced this frustration recently two weeks ago. I had already used up my buffer posts so I knew I had to write.  When I sat down to do the draft no matter what I did though I just couldn’t find the words I wanted.  So instead of writing, I ended up sitting and staring at the screen instead.  With each passing second of staring, my frustration grew.  Just as I was about to boil over, I received an email from a fellow leukemia survivor I have been chatting with.  He was sending me some quotes that helped him through his tough times, this was one of the quotes he sent:

“There will come a day when you'll feel like shit and you'll want to give up on this life and everything else.  When that day arrives, save yourself some trouble and don't do thing.  Just take a nap.” - Unknown


Talk about the perfect example of the interconnectedness of our world we spoke about in last week’s post, Why We Are Given Challenges.  Just as I was facing what seemed like an unbeatable challenge, I was provided with the answer.  It was like a light bulb went off, “You can’t write because you forcing it and are tired.”  I immediately got up and went for a nap.  It was just what I needed.  After my nap I felt so recharged that I gave the draft another try, and to my surprise the words flowed as easily as they ever have. That day taught me you can’t force writing, you can only do it when you feel inspiration. 

This can go way beyond writing and be applied to our everyday lives.  You can’t force anything; our best work will always come when it is inspired and not workmanlike.  When things aren’t going the way we may like and we are getting frustrated, instead of giving up we just need to take that proverbial “nap”.  It can even be a metaphorical nap, we just need to get time away from what is causing us all the frustration so our brains can recharge.  95%  of the time this will solve all our problems and we will come back with a fresh mind and complete our task.  And the best part is......you have the perfect excuse to take real naps whenever you need ;)

I would love to hear if you have any tips or techniques that you use to help overcome difficulties and frustrating times :)
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