Getting Organized

It’s been a while. A struggle. My soul felt brittle. I needed to get beyond a certain paralysis.

For so long I’ve felt like I was being dragged around by my hair, going from one thing to another without agency, like a monkey on my back. It wasn’t one thing but a million unnamed pressures. A sense of why bother. Fear and self-doubt.

I didn’t know where to start.

I cleared off my desk, I cleared out my head. I sorted through scraps of paper and opened a file on my computer meant to organize my thoughts. I started with making lists.

I made a list with the words at the top: Getting Work Done, and laid out a daily goal.

Monday: blogs, Substack, .com
Tuesday: stories, revisions
Wednesday: collection
Thursday: business, proposals, workshops, pitches, phone calls
Friday: submissions

I didn’t have to browbeat myself or become so overwhelmed with all the different tasks, but could devote a time/space for each and slowly, inch by inch, row by row, grow my writing garden. I’ll complete far more than scatter-shot attempts. Despair. Hopelessness.

I’m already making progress on a new collection, new stories, looking over a folder of things that need to be revised. The list draws me back to what is at hand. I don’t have to do it all and all at once, but each day I awake with a bit of a plan. Do-able bite size pieces. Much like what I teach in my Flash Memoir Workshop. Speaking of which . . .

My Flash Memoir workshop in Kalamazoo went off stunningly!