What if I just did the next thing that presented itself to be done and moved on? Pick up the dog toys, vacuum the dog hair off the carpet — what, again? — finally fill those empty shelves I put up in the living room last month, clear off the kitchen counter again.
In other words, instead of looking around and seeing everything that has to be done and saying, “Woe is me,” just take one of those tasks and do it, and then do the one next to it, and so on.
Just like my slow-moving writing projects — “Write the next sentence, even if it’s the only sentence you write today.” That advice has actually moved me forward a bit lately.
It’s funny — I tend to stall in the writing process after I figure out the ending.
“I already know this story,” my psyche says. “Tell me something new.”
“But I haven’t finished telling the story,” I protest.
“We both know how it ends, don’t we?” my psyche insists. “Ho hum. Move along.”
I wrestle my psyche to the ground, growling, “Now listen you. We know how it ends, but what happened before that? How did everyone get to the end?”
We lock eyes for a minute, maybe two minutes.
“Huh,” my psyche says at last. “How DID they get there? Maybe if …” and we had a nice conversation after that.
