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An incredibly clean oven at Chez Manning |
Do you have days when you realize
you've achieved nothing. Zip. My ‘to do’ list sits forlornly on the counter top with
not one thing crossed off. This is me. Pretty much every day. I look at my list
and there’s thirty-three things on it. Why? Even if I could whip up a cloning
machine and have seven useless copies of me running around, I couldn't cross
off thirty-three things unless all of them said, ‘cross this off.’ One of the
things I didn’t achieve today is ‘get cat food.’ Any minute now my ears are
going to be assaulted by the wails of a cat who is going to go into cardiac
arrest unless I feed him right now.
I've decided to
go a bit Freud on myself. Stand back, it could get uglier than me trying to eat
peas (those things are evil and were put
on this planet to taunt me). I called up my version of Sigmund and Sigmunded
myself (that’s an awesome name, is Sigmund,) and talked to myself for ten
seconds before I got bored. I came to the crashing conclusion that I’m a
self-defeatist. I can defeat myself into anything. I could put it down to
coming from a family where you only called attention to yourself if you were on
fire, had a bone sticking out – and it had to be a femur, or a strange man
wearing a trench-coat was chasing me offering up sweets if I’d help him look
for his lost puppy. But I can’t blame my upbringing. Sigmund said non in a cool French accent. No, the sad
truth is I always think I’ll fall flat on my face or will look ridiculous or
will fail so I don’t try. Okay, so the session with Siggie went on for a bit
longer and we're now besties, hence the name Siggie. So, instead of making
myself write ten pages of my current WIP, I tell myself it will be so woeful
and bad that I’ll come to the crashing conclusion that I’m a terrible writer
and I should have abandoned this years ago and taken up composting. Take my
blog. I literally stare at my computer every Monday, determined to write
something awesome only to run from the room to clean the self-cleaning oven.
So.
I've decided I
need to beat down the demons in my brain and get out there and make myself do
things. Like this blog. I’m going to post regularly and I will most likely bore
my three followers including Uncle Lennie (Hey Len! How’s the pumpkin growing
going?) but I am going to post
regularly and I am going to make myself write every single day. I have to
because Siggie said it’s the only way to defeat the demons.
Do you have any
tips for a serial self-defeatist to break the cycle? I’d appreciate any before
I go and clean the oven. Again.
Philbert the cat who does not take politely to
being denied food.
