Paralyzed by Inaction

October is here, the month I wish I was born in, simply to be closer to Halloween. Stores are bringing out over-scented pine cones to put on your tables, egg nog is on the shelves. Leaves are falling and the scent of green is fading from the wind, pumpkin spice, moist earth, and crisp mornings replaces them. Or the way I like to say it,
”It’s Spooky Season”
One would think that, in my favorite time of year, I’d be full of inspiration and energy, and I do think that I am, but I find myself so indecisive on where to put that energy, it fizzles out.

A lot of times, I think it tends to feel like the universe throws things in my way to inhibit whatever bit of progress I’m trying to make in my life, but making and breaking habits is like that sometimes.

In the face of these things, I’ve found the easiest way for me to overcome these distractions and obstacles is to be stubborn. Pretend it’s someone trying to push you around, or some annoying salesman distracting you. Say no and pass them by.
It’s not easy still, even if it is the one that works best. I feel like my brain goes wherever it wants to, and is hardly ever actually under my control. Harnessing my own power feels more like giving into the tide than it does driving a car or even riding a bike.

When motivation comes at the right time, when I’m in the right place and all of the stars align in my favor, I can get all kinds of things done in an ungodly amount of time. Despite knowing better, I treat that as my bar for success a lot of times, even though it’s not realistic in any way.
Any time I am unable to harness my motivation, I have to watch it slip away and gallop off into the horizon without me. It sounds dramatic to say that, but it feels that way every single time I can’t reach my own expectations, it feels like failure.

It shouldn’t be that way though, and this is something I’ve found I push on myself more than anyone pushes it on me anymore. In fact, I’m surrounded by people telling me to slow down now, to rest and recharge, and realign myself.
I’ve told myself that that means, instead of worrying about other people I should start being more introspective so that I’d be even more efficient when I went back to ‘work’, but introspection and self help is still another kind of work. I am much more self aware now thanks to the time I’ve had free of expectation from most people, but the work never stopped.

I don’t know how to stop working, I don’t think I know what to do with myself when I am not serving some kind of practical purpose. I don’t want to say that I am okay existing this way, that would imply some kind of satisfaction. I would like to say that, at the very least, I want to take control of my brain eventually. I’d like to be able to take this anxiety towards inaction and use it to push me forward, without burning myself out in the process.

I have been passively looking for some kind of different way of doing things that might be more manageable for my brain. Ways to break up my workflow so that I have more small victories, instead of one long fight and one victory.

Finding methods I can apply to art has been challenging but I found one video titled How to Actually Follow Your Passion where the creator talks about how the fear of failure can and will keep you from achieving almost anything if you let it freeze you into inaction.

As a solution for this, they pose the “Passion Trial” wherein one makes a list of things they want to try, picks one, and decides on a period of time (or an amount of units) to reach before deciding if they like it or not. (Usually segmented in 10s, so 10 videos, tattoo designs, short stories, weeks spent on something etc.)

I hope to take this and use it for my art so that I can find out what direction I really want to go with it. Making art is great when it is just to make art, I would never argue otherwise.

I’m an adult now however, living in a capitalistic society centered on constant productivity. I’ve feel like I have been making the same kind of art for my whole life and I haven’t done anything grand with it. I don’t want to go crazy or anything, I don’t expect to be the next Vivziepop or Tim Burton.

A couple of directions I think I might go when it comes to applying this method are:

Webcomic - 10 pages or a story centered on characters from my novel most likely
Animation - 10 little tiktoks made of different characters with funky little sounds
Short Stories - 10 short stories, likely with a maximum word count to keep them simple
Advertising/Commissions - Hand out my card to 10 random strangers or put it up in 10 places in public to advertise my art (Maybe include social media posts in the count)

Looking at it now my list feels kind of small and insignificant, but sometimes so do I, so we’re going to give it a chance anyway.
I guess if you keep up with me, you’ll find out which one of these things I picked to pursue ;)