Gift horses and such

A bit of a personal post, sorry - I've driven myself mad today going in circles around my work, and wanted to pick your collective creative brains ('picking someone's brain' is really a disgusting term, isn't it? Horrible mental image of someone fiddling inside a brain like an ape performing a social grooming ritual. But anyway).

I struggle a lot with guilt. Guilt that I'm not doing enough, or not doing more. It means that I find it hard to enjoy anything unreservedly. In the middle of something I love doing, I'll stop and think, "this isn't good enough, you're wasting time, you should be doing something else, it's taking you too long, you should be further along than you are, you should be able to cope better, work harder, work longer hours, you should have achieved more in your life by now." I spend a lot of my day listening to myself say things like this. This constant mental argument is exhausting.

One of the things that's making me most guilty at the moment is that I'm doing what I love. I know this sounds weird, but bear with me. I have enough money, plenty of time, and I'm writing full-time. This is what I have always wanted to do. There's a big part of me, however, that's waiting for the other shoe to drop. I'm almost waiting to be punished, as if this great good fortune has to be balanced out by something awful - as if I don't deserve it. I guess I'm looking the gift horse in the mouth and attempting to send it back. It's not rational, but it's a surprisingly strong belief, and I'm fighting with myself in an attempt not to act it out.

I have a tendency to self-sabotage. When something's going well, or I have a big opportunity, I often (and usually subconsciously) mess it up. I only realise this well after the fact. I avoid a potentially important meeting by getting a panic attack, fail to return a call that could lead to new and exciting work, back out of something that sounds fun because I worry I'm not going to be any good at it (this is where self-sabotage and a destructive tendency to perfectionism combine in one neat package. The mind is a wonderful thing). I think the urge is stronger now because I have nearly finished the Masters, and my safety framework is about to disappear. When the Masters is done, I'm not going to be working towards a degree - I'm just going to be writing, for better or for worse.

So, here are the ways I usually act these feelings out:

1) Avoidance - speaks for itself, really.

2) Psychosomatic Girl Strikes Again - I get sick in one way or another.

3) Resistance - this can appear as crazy restlessness that has me chasing my own tail, or as a sudden loss of interest and enthusiasm.

4) Misplaced virtue - for example, "I should get a proper job, it's not fair on LOML." (Read: "I'm scared of trying and failing and I'm conveniently finding a seemingly reasonable and unselfish reason not to try"). LOML wants me to be doing what I'm doing. We don't need more money. We don't have kids or a mortgage or anyone relying on us (well, apart from Mink and the goldfish, but their needs are simple. The pot plants fend for themselves - they have to, I'm erratic with watering).

Do any of you have this 'proper job' belief? Do you know where it came from? I can't pinpoint exactly when this idea was instilled in me - it didn't come from my mum, I know. My stepdad certainly had his thoughts on the matter, but I don't think the things he said could have seeded such a strong belief. There is a very big part of me that believes work 'should' be from nine to five, Monday to Friday, that it 'should' be difficult and that, if I'm happy and enjoying what I'm doing, it's not 'real' work and it's not a 'real' job. It's like I secretly believe I have to be unhappy to be a proper adult. It's weird. I really want to give myself permission to be a writer without guilt.

I guess I'm wondering whether any of you share these tendencies, and how you deal with them. I've found affirmations very helpful in the past - any other tips?

On a completely different subject, thank you so much for all the questions you left in the comments of the previous post - they're great! Can't wait to answer them.

Building blocks

LOML is away in California for the next week. I have conned various friends into staying with me, though, so I'm not too lonely. I'm also trying to stay very busy. As well as my own writing and my freelance work, I have a huge pile of alterations to do.

This week has been an uphill struggle when it comes to writing. For some reason I have been in a state of full-blown resistance, building little writer's blocks for myself like a toddler making a Lego tower. I have a whole array of things I use to block my creativity:

1) Perfectionism. This one's a killer. "Why should I bother doing it if it's not going to be perfect?" Translates as "I'm afraid to finish. I don't trust my abilities."
2) Indifference. "I can't be bothered. I'm bored with it." Translates as "I'm afraid of caring too much about it and then failing," or "I'm afraid of succeeding and causing changes in my comfortable little existence."
3) Guilt. "I feel so guilty about my low productivity. I'm only writing 500 words a day at the moment. Instead of being kind to myself and realising that at least I'm making progress and it will get easier soon, I'm going to stop writing altogether because I feel so guilty about not writing more." Feeling guilty and thinking about how rubbish you are for half an hour is a lot easier than working for half an hour. I've developed a method of mentally splitting myself in half. I let one part of my brain go and sit on the couch and chew its hair and mutter about how guilty it feels about not being productive, while the other part (which has control of my body) sits down and surreptitiously does some work, glancing over at the first part occasionally and going "Mmmm," and "I know what you mean." Then both parts are happy. And I have a page of new writing.
4) Misplaced (and false) virtue. "I really should help Mum/mow the lawn/scrub behind the toilet cistern with an old toothbrush/make lunch for my husband/brush the cat." Translates as "I do things that allow me to feel smug and self-righteous about avoiding the work I know is more important." Also translates as "But I COULDN'T work, I was far too busy. It's not my fault."
5) False pragmatism. "This is never going to sell. Why am I bothering? I should do something practical that I know will make me money."
6) 'Real job' syndrome. "Think of all those people working 12-hour shifts in factories to get by. They'd be disgusted if they knew I was staring at a screen biting my nails and doing nothing. I'm not living in the real world." The counter-attack to this one is, "The world needs artists just as much as it needs doctors, factory-workers and crocodile hunters. I'm doing what I'm meant to be doing."
7) Self-criticism. "This is terrible. Worst thing ever written. Who are you kidding?" Telling yourself something is bad is far easier than working to make it better, and gives you hours of mental entertainment as you self-flagellate and eat lots of chocolate.

And then there are things like drinking endless cups of coffee, making snacks, looking at blogs. Endless displacement activities. For the past couple of weeks I have been relentlessly busy - every hour of every day has been spoken for. I have been telling people, "I've hardly had a chance to work on the new book because of [list of Things To Do]", when in reality I know I have manufactured a lot of this busy-ness to avoid working on the new book. Why? Because it's scary. Because waiting for news from agents has made me lose confidence in myself. Because I feel uncertain about the future. The only way to get past these blocks is to work through them. So that's what I'm trying to do. So I'd better get back to work.