So This Is How Other People Live – The Climb #220

Tuesday 29^th August 2017

If you’re a person who is on the go, then taking a forced break is a strange thing. It reminds me of stepping off one of those travellators you find at airports: your momentum is forward but everything around you has slowed down and you feel yourself stumble.
I do still have a few tasks I need to take care of. I promised a friend months ago that I would read his script and give feedback. This is now about 2 months late and he’s been very patient so I started diving into that tonight.
I also chatted to Kate over messenger, swapping industry gossip and just discussing ideas.
There’s a part of me that wants to take what I’ve learnt from the last round of edits and apply it to short stories, to see whether it sees me get more acceptances. I do have a short story to write this weekend, but I want to write more. Sense tells me to maybe just do the one that’s owed.
Even so, book 2 ideas are flooding my head, and speaking to Kate tonight, I became very aware of just how much I want to get into draft 2 of book 2. It’s taking considerable effort not to.
I do have some School of the Sword stuff to do, but I’m a little uninterested in the swordfighting at the moment and I’m not sure why. All the billing stuff has been quite stressful and I’m not sure if I’m subconsciously a little pissed off about this. But I just don’t seem as motivated as I was.
Is it because I feel I’ve achieved what I wanted to do this year and as a result taken my foot off the pedal? I don’t know. I do have a tendancy to lose interest when I achieve goals so perhaps it’s related to that. I have got a tournament in a couple of weeks but I’m not focused on it like I was Astolat and Fightcamp.
There’s a part of me that feels that everything is progressing and I just need to be patient and stay the course. This isn’t like me. I didn’t have the best time in the gym tonight but the important thing is that I show up. However, normally that comes with a bit of fire to achieve… and yet it’s not been there today.
It could also partly be that I’ve been a bit hungover today. Last night’s celebrational drink was very much felt this morning.
But perhaps, my body really just need time to relax and refocus. I’ve already achieved a lot this year but I don’t want to rest on my laurels.
Which is why this whole resting thing is so alien to me. There’s a World of Warcraft update tomorrow and so I plan to spend a lot of time playing over the next few days once I get the script done and all the billing stuff sorted.
I think underneath all of this is a worry and stress. The novel has gone off and there’s nothing more I can do. On one hand it’ll either come back that I’ve got to do more rewrites or that it’s off on submission, and there’s nothing I can do to alter either of those two outcomes. But at the same time, this is when I find out how much the belief in myself is warrented. As much as it is sensible advice to myself to not worry about it and get on with something else, it’s impossible not to.
It’s like waiting for exam results, except a thousand-fold. I remind myself that we’ve been here before. Those times I was sure my agent would come back telling me that she’d made a mistake. I don’t have so much of an imposter syndrome any more, although I do worry at times that my aims are deluded.
I think that’s why I need to keep busy. I need to prove to myself that I constantly improve. Perhaps I worry that my swordfighting skill has plateaued, perhaps I see what weights I lifted a year ago and notice how little I’ve gained. Maybe I look at my weight and despite feeling ‘more hench’ , also feel overweight. And perhaps my writing isn’t as good as I hope.
All of which makes trying to relax impossible. I need to throw myself behind some aim, be it improving my swordfighting, or achieving something in World of Warcraft. I only work best when I have an impossible aim that I’m motivated towards. And for that to happen I need to be motivated.
But maybe the real reason for the way I feel right now, is that I’m not used to rest. I’m a lousy patient, even when I know taking a break is exactly what I need right now for the marathons ahead.
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