The art of avoiding

Today, I have a strange day. The kids aren’t with me, S. is working and as it is a Monday I have almost no lessons to teach. This means it is the perfect day to do things that I should do. Such as cleaning the bathroom (something I really do not enjoy doing), or pre-write a few blog posts (I have never been good at that), or simply sit down and write.

But…

The weather is amazing! The forecast for today is 26°C, the sky is blue, it is sunny. On top of that, I received two interesting books just at the moment that I sat down to write this post (one I already know a bit as the first draft was published on a blog, it is The Halley Branch by Trent P. McDonald). I have two newspapers to read (ok I don’t think that I’ll behave like I did once, 15 years ago, when I read a copy of The Economist in its integrity from cover to cover…) I have the special edition of Der Spiegel “#Frauenland” which is super interesting too…

Those are just the easy distractions. 

So, I want to write a book, I have wanted to do so for ages. I did participate in Nanowrimo, after day 13 it was over for me. I needed to protect my story. This story is still there, and now almost 3 years later, might be time to see if I can do something with it. Back in the past, I felt that I needed to protect it. If I would have continued, it would have turned out too dark. My mother’s final stage cancer did not help at the time. I now have these time windows, that I should use to write my book, a story, stories, a blog post.

I have a tenancy to avoid what I want to do. The truth be told, I often don’t need a distraction in order to not do anything. All I need is the idea that it won’t work out. Why am I not writing? Because somewhere inside me there is a little nagging voice whispering, “it won’t work out”, “you have no talent”, “it’s a waste of time”, “just think of all the admin you’ll have to go through”, and then I’ll research how to publish a book, without having written a single line.