Nothing has interfered with my focus and my progress as much as worrying about the outcome. Nothing has ruined my drive and enthusiasm as much as that. Worrying about how much am I getting done. And it is especially hard to measure. And it’s easy to measure it wrongly. How do I measure it wrongly? By measuring how I’m doing right now. I can’t be at my best all the time. Some days are better than others. It needs to be measured over a particular period of time.

Overall

When you do a survey you don’t ask your question(s) of one person. Or just a couple. You ask a multitude of people on their thoughts. Same with how you’re doing. Maybe you’re having a hard time getting started today and you’re not getting a whole lot done. But how have you done in the past week? Overall, how have you been doing? If I’m not cranking it out right now then I’m losing focus because my mind is distracted by what I’m doing wrong. I’m not doing anything wrong. I’m doing it the way it goes. Some days are better than others. That’s the way it is for every body.

I wanted to work on this earlier today but I couldn’t. I didn’t feel that I was going to get much done. So in despair I just went and sat out on the deck and thought about how much I didn’t like being like this. And I got to thinking that worrying about the process was what was holding me back. That helped, but what really helped is when I decided I would just not do anything for today. I was so disappointed at how I was letting it make me feel that I just gave up. Said to myself I’ll get back to it tomorrow. But today, I don’t care. I’m just too tired of caring. It’s wearing me out.

After a few more minutes, feeling good about the decision that I’d made, I started to relax. Now here I am working on this post. And, at least for now, I don’t care how much I get done. And the thoughts I’m having about all of this just keep flowing. I’m afraid I can’t type fast enough and I’ll forget some of them.

If the ideas stop flowing, that’s okay. There’s always tomorrow.

 

 

You don’t know how long it took me to write this post. And if reading it helps you in any way then you don’t care how long I took.

I want to enjoy writing posts but that’s hard to do when I turn it into a job. I want a post, but I want to enjoy doing it. I enjoy practicing my guitar if I’ll let myself. But sometimes I try to do too much. I want to get better but, again, I want to enjoy it. Sometimes I play my guitar for thirty minutes and sometimes I do an hour or two. But that’s what I feel like doing. That’s the amount of time I enjoy. If after an hour I don’t feel like practicing anymore then I can keep going but I really don’t make any progress. Sometimes it hurts. I get tired or disinterested or both and I start making mistakes. Or rather I start “practicing making  mistakes” that I have to undo next time.