All week long I’ve been wrestling with this newsletter. Not this one, specifically, but the post I was trying to write. Excited to write, even. It just wouldn’t take shape. I couldn’t make the central point stick. It had no spine, as Twyla Tharp would say.
I don’t typically find it stressful to write these missives, nor am I a perfectionist. They go out with typos and under-developed thoughts, and I’m okay with that. This latest draft, though, was not coming together, even by my medium standards. And I was starting to feel anxious, dreading sitting down to work on it.
Finally, I said to myself: just tell the readers you don’t have anything this week! My teeny number of paid subscribers will not mutiny and cancel, and the other readers probably have seventeen other substacks to get through, anyway. Immediately I felt so much relief. Giving myself permission to not do the thing—a thing that only I have decided I need to do every week!—was exactly what I needed. So why is this so hard to do?
I can remember the first time I let myself off the hook in this way. I was in middle school, I think, and I had some kind of assignment due that I just couldn’t seem to make progress on. Time was running out. My little pre-teen self was super stressed! I wasn’t the kind of kid who ever missed schoolwork. But I clearly recall realizing that I could just hand it in late, and it would be FINE. Other kids did it all the time! Why not me?
I felt like an elephant had just stepped off my chest. What a feeling, what a realization! Like so many of the biggest revelations in life, it was entirely obvious. Yet it had never occurred to me before.
Almost 40 years later, I’m still having to rediscover this obvious truth over and over again. My fundamental nature as a person who is almost never late, who meets deadlines, who does all the things, hasn’t changed since I was that “gifted” kid in the 80s. It’s much easier to give this permission to others than to myself.
As a professor, I almost never took late marks from students and granted pretty much any extension asked for. I told students that I never took it personally or thought any less of them for handing in late work or imperfect work. I also realized that lateness was practically expected from academic faculty, whether it was turning in a chapter draft or a whole book manuscript. Most deadlines were purely administrative without dire consequences. After all, there are few academic emergencies. I was still rarely late myself, but had no problem reminding stressed out colleagues that they could take an extra day, week … year in some cases!
Once I took the pressure off of myself to write the newsletter I had in mind, I stumbled across a seemingly-unrelated article that gave me a new idea for how to frame what I wanted to say. Now I have a different path forward and more time to see if it works out. Hopefully you’ll read that piece next week, but if not, I know you’ll understand.
I decided to share my thought process this week just in case you need permission (from yourself) to drop a ball or two, if only for a time. Let’s face it, a lot of the things we assign urgency to aren’t really that important. Your family can have pizza for dinner, you don’t need to read the whole book for book club, a meeting can be postponed. What deadlines (self-imposed ones, especially) can you give yourself an extension on today?
What I’m reading: A Memoir of My Former Self: A Life in Writing, by Hilary Mantel. This is a collection of essays, reviews, and lectures put together after Mantel’s (untimely) death. As a reader, I am in awe of her craft. As a writer, I want to throw away everything I’ve ever written because it could never be half as good.
What I’m watching: Criminal Minds Evolution Part 2. At this point, the series is practically a parody of itself but I enjoy a good melodrama.