A little stuck

I am feeling a little like I have writer's block, but not to such a drastic extent that I can't write. It's a more lingering, maybe my mind is too quiet, kind of block. I wrote in my recent paid subscriber newsletter that I’ve been sinking myself into nature, hoping that some of the calm and known expectation of animals and plants continuing to grow re-centers me. 

If only I could somehow eat three healthy meals a day, set aside time to exercise with cardio and strength throughout the week, practice good sleep hygiene, work on some mental health bits to fill my toolbox, keep taking the meds that I don’t want to be on for the rest of my life, do chores on a schedule, be a good partner, be a conscientious and active community member, give Zoey a loving and fulfilling life, check in on my friends more…oh, and have a thriving business. 

It would be so much easier if I had a clock-in/clock-out office job. 

Not the first time I’ve thought this or shared it. Not to say that you’re safe in your job, which we’ve seen in mass layoffs, but to say that you can have a definitive line between work and personal, and a myriad of things you don’t have to think about. You are not worried about whether sales tax applies to your work, the semantic and legal difference between retainer and deposit, how the hell you’re going to network for new clients when you’re extremely introverted, or the constant struggle and dissonance of downright awful news and disintegration of rights & a need to post because the bills still need to be paid. 

That was a mouthful of a sentence, but also briefly illustrates, I hope, what it feels like to be a business owner and freelancer. Fuck generative AI. ChatGPT could never have written those run-on sentence-paragraphs.

I am TIRED. Yet I can do more stuff now than I could three years ago. Make that make sense. I do take solace in the anecdotal knowledge that creative work projects have been drying up this year. Are you resonating with any of this? Are you also feeling bleak and creatively dried up?

etc.

article links, recs, personal updates, and a plant feature