Whenever I have work put in front of me, specifically a rewrite of something I’ve worked hard on that involves the unravelling of that work, my process tends to go something like this:
- 1. I can’t do it.
- 2. I don’t WANT to do it. I stomp around a bit and do other things.
- 3. It’s not even that I don’t WANT to do it, I think that it might be literally impossible.
- 4. Somebody else could probably do it, it’s just ME who can’t.
- 5. All of the previous work is bad.
- 6. Ir’s a mountain made of trash and I can’t climb it.
- 7. It’s worse than bad, It’s MEDIOCRE.
- 8. I’M A FRAUD AND EVERYONE KNOWS IT
- 9. MY WHOLE LIFE, I’VE BEEN A FRAUD
- 10. I GUESS I’LL ORDER SOME TRASHBAGS ON AMAZON TO PUT MYSELF IN
- 11. I DESCEND TO THE FLOOR.
- 12. ….I peel myself off the floor.
- 13. I begin the work.
- 14. I do the work.
- 15. Turns out, after all of that, I can.
One would THINK that I could save myself a lot of agony and stress and stomps around the house by skipping right to step 12. But are steps 1-11 a necessary part of it? Maybe I have to humble myself, prostrate to the work, so that I don’t enter it with any sort of ego, an ego that could stop me from seeing and fixing the actual trash. Maybe 1-11 are in fact the work.