Anna LeBaron

Enough is Enough

I feel like a time waster deluxe.

This feeling causes me to feel a lot of inner stress, which causes me to do things that allow Denial to start running the show in my head so that I can relive the inner stress, which as you know wastes even more time. Steven Pressfield in his book The War of Art calls this thing Resistance.

The things I do while I’m in Denial mostly involve food, or if I’m not using food for comfort, I turn to a screen. Any screen will do: my phone, the television, or a computer. It’s easy to forget about Important Things I need to do when I’m not thinking about Important Things I need to do. Sometimes Denial takes the form of reading yet another self-help book. I have piles and piles of those waiting for me to start, finish, or re-read.

Denial is a great stress reliever…until…Reality gives you a swift kick in the pants and yells in your face like a mean drill instructor at boot camp.

Things like:

“YOU ARE WASTING PRECIOUS TIME!”
“YOU ARE SMARTER THAN THIS!”
“YOU ARE BETTER THAN THIS!”
“WHAT IS YOUR PROBLEM?!”

Reality is really the words I yell in my own mind, and am mean to myself like this sometimes, which is self-defeating. Another self-defeating thing I do goes like this:

On Monday I say to myself, “I’ll do that [fill-in-the-blank with any Important Thing] on the weekend when I have more time.”
On Saturday I say to myself, “I’ll do that [Important Thing] in the mornings during the week when I have more time.”

The weeks, and then the weekends, fly by lightning-fast like always and no Important Things get done. (Writing is one of the Important Things.)

This rolling pattern of never-ending procrastination causes my chest to seize up when I have the courage to acknowledge it. This can’t be good for my mental, emotional, or physical health and it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure that out.

This cycle of perpetual procrastination about Important Things has to stop so I set some goals this year with the help of some friends and Michael Hyatt so I could have my Best Year Ever.

Writing and posting a blog once a week is one of my goals for 2015.

This blog is me drawing a line in the sand and saying Enough is Enough.

The truth is I am afraid. I am afraid of writing the wrong thing, or saying it the wrong way. I’m deathly afraid of saying I Am A Writer because that would change everything if it were true because writer’s write actual words and publish them. I am currently in the process of writing a book, for crying out loud! Maybe after it’s published I’ll stop being afraid of saying I Am A Writer, but probably not.

So far, most of my words have either stayed in my head (which causes me no end of all of the above nonsense) or get written longhand in notebooks where they are never read again, not even by me. I have stacks and stacks of those notebooks, which I am even more deathly afraid of cracking open and reading. Afraid of the contents of my heart that they will reveal.

Comments

  3. Hi Anna. We've known each other in the 4500 for a while. This is my first visit to your site. This is the first blog post I've ever read, and I think it's really cool that you set a goal that was doable: blog once a week. Everyone keeps says I should tell my story, but I don't know how, or that's what I say to myself.

    My collision with Grace didn't happen until I was 36, just over a year ago. I'd been living in a hotel room for nearly 2 years, addicted and depressed, my life going no where, and my then boyfriend was in jail for a month. That's when I met Jesus. On that hotel room floor crying out to a God I'd never known, that I just couldn't do it anymore, I found Jesus there with me.

    Now, thirteen months later all sorts of wonderful things have happened because I've accepted Jesus and am surrendering everything to God. Each morning I wake with a prayer asking God's Will be done in my life. I die each morning so Jesus can live through me. And I really, really wish I could tell everyone about it! Oh the blessings that have happened! The impossible things I thought would never see, I've seen. I'm learning who I am, and I know whose I am.

    Now that I'm married, a member of a church, and baptised, I'm settling in for what's next.
    You inspire me. I have shelves of awesome books by all those writers from the IF tours, and more like them, that I just can't find time to read. But sitting here awake at 2 in the morning, I wandered into your blog.

    Thank you for being you and such a cool role model. I'll be back. ☺

  4. P.S. I'm afraid too. I think that's what I mean when I say I don't know how to tell my story.

  6. I'd love that!
    Family and teachers have always told me I'm a good writer, and I really love communicating via writing on sites like IF:Equip. I used to write all the time as a teen.

    My husband says he saw a book called Blogging For Dummies he would get me, but that would just be another one of those books on my shelf I never read.

    After writing to you last night (early this morning, really), I got up and ate the last piece of my wedding cake left over from Saturday. I know, I know, we were supposed to freeze it it for our 1st anniversary, but that wasn't going to happen in this house. We have sweet teeth living here. Then, as I sat on the kitchen floor at 2 a.m., I started praying. You see I have this list of things I think I cannot do, and one thing on that list is for me to tell my story about my collision with Grace. When I prayed about that, I cried. I just can't (for so many reasons I'm making up in my head, I'm sure).

    The only ace in my pocket is that I've made one of these lists before. Titled : Ten Things I Cannot Do Alone, Please Help Me God. That list was made in December 2014. Today, ten months later, nearly everything on that list has come true. God is faithful to provide.

    I think I'm scared that if I tell my story, I'll have to tell all of it, and that's the scary part, because it's not all pretty. But I suppose no one's story is all roses and rainbows. And who wants to read about roses and rainbows anyway?

    I'd love to talk sometime. Thank you for offering. Have a great morning. See you on the 4500!

  7. Oh, I also wanted to say, I bet I'm a bigger procrastinator than you! Maybe we could have a procrastination contest, like a staring contest, only much, much, less productive.