Choosing Not to Care–At Least, Not So Much

“Doing our best has limits,” says Richard Swenson, author of Margins. “Our rush toward excellence in one quadrant of life must not be permitted to cause destruction in another.” Those who go “all out” for success in one area – even writing – risk failure in other important areas of life.

The tug of war happens when we are trying to be excellent in so many roles: writers, parenting children and grandchildren, caring for elderly parents, neighbors, church members, and more. It can be overwhelming!

From Stuck to Unstuck

The sense of being overwhelmed can quickly solidify into being stuck. We want to get off the merry-go-round, but we feel stymied in our attempts to do so. We often can’t see the forest for the trees. Enter a lovely little book called Simple Acts of Moving Forward: 60 Suggestions for Getting Unstuck by Vinita Hampton Wright. As she says, when you have too many things on your plate, Sometimes you have to give yourself permission to just not care so much about how something will turn out.”

It’s all right to set your own priorities. It’s all right not to care about some things–no matter WHO thinks you should (including me). Why? Because if you care deeply about everything, you’ll burn out now and live an exhausted life.

And exhausted writers have a terrible time writing.

All on Your Shoulders?

Often we feel like everything is up to us. Sometimes, though, it really isn’t. Even with those projects or jobs that are totally up to you, they may not really need to be done (like kids’ big birthday parties.) Or they can be done with help (like moving it to a McDonalds Play Place). Only you can decide what things really matter to you.

As Ms. Wright says, You can decide what is most important, what is next in importance, what you can take or leave, and what has nothing to do with you. Others may think you should care, but it’s not their job to decide what your priorities should be.” (This includes your writing! NO ONE else gets to decide where it belongs on your list of priorities!)

What To Do

What can you do if you’re sinking under responsibilities that choke out your writing time? Ms. Wright advises“If you are overwhelmed, find one thing to stop caring about and stop caring right now.

I have some things I need to stop caring about, and some things I can stop caring so much about. For example, this week I wrote up the minutes of a meeting at church, but there was no need to take 90 minutes to do it. Proofreading is one thing, but revising and rewording things several times was a waste of what could have been writing time.

A few years ago, I had to stop caring so much about family dinners for the holidays. Living on the farm in Iowa, everything was homemade from scratch, and much of what we ate was also homegrown. Moving to a city down south, and getting older, meant those cooked-from-scratch meals for the extended family were taking more time than I wanted to give at the holidays. The change was hard, but now I have no problem fixing huge frozen lasagnas from Costco’s!

Whatever!

Most of all, we probably need to stop caring so much what people think about us: about how we look, about our choices in life, about our political opinions, about what we want to write, and where we set our priorities. And we need to care a lot less about other people’s opinions and preferences, and learn to live and let live a bit more.

Certainly, you want to care deeply about certain things. But caring deeply about everything–about things that don’t warrant it–will rob you of precious energy needed for your true desires. And, hopefully, one of those desires is pursuing your writing dream.

The Gift of Time

It isn’t my birthday or Christmas or Mother’s Day, but it feels like it today. Why? Because I’ve decided to give myself a wonderful gift now.

The gift of time.

I’ve been writing and publishing since my kids were babies. They’re in their thirties now, with their own children ranging from toddlers to teenagers. During many of my children’s growing-up years, I was either single parenting or the family relied heavily on my income. Slowing down to study my craft was a dream I put on my yearly goals list, but it was rarely an option. The 50+ hours of work per week needed to generate income: writing books, teaching writing, speaking, writing test questions, and doing private critiques.

Always Running, Faster, FASTER!

Whenever I thought about studying more, reading more, taking more time to grow as a writer (versus making every hour a billable hour), I would promise myself, Later, when things slow down and the cash flow eases up.

Even when that day came where I could cut back, I found that the very idea panicked me. I had drummed into my head for so many years that freelancer warning, “If you don’t work, you don’t eat.” You learn to go without paid sick days or paid vacations–let alone time to study one’s craft.

If Not NOW, When?

For several years, I’ve been having a discussion with a dear writing friend about slowing down and spending time to improve our writing. I took motivational workshops, learned how to “work smarter, not harder,” streamlined my work habits, and multi-tasked until I met myself coming and going. And what did I do with the time freed up by all this smarter working? Took on more projects, learned how to blog, Facebook and Twitter…but rarely studied. Oh, I bought craft books, but the books that got my full attention seemed to focus on time management.

And my friend? Except for having grandchildren, she was as busy as I was. Yet she got her MFA in children’s writing (traveling half-way around the world to do it), and is now working on her Ph.D. While I don’t have the money for either of those things, I could certainly be studying more. And that’s where I decided to apply my gift of time.

Spending Vs. Investing Time

Starting today, I am giving myself the gift of time to study. I think if I do four or five hours of writing (the moneymaking activities) in the morning, then I could surely study for an hour every afternoon. To survive in the changing publishing times, we will all need to become better writers. And if not now, when? (By the way, it isn’t something I feel I should do. It’s something I want to do. I honestly do love to study.)

Maybe you can’t afford to work part-time yet. (I’m not positive that I can either. I’ll find out!) I know that situation is a reality for many of us. But if you can squeeze out even a daily hour to read current books in your field and study a writing craft book, I encourage you to do it. I’ve signed up for a writing course online which takes an hour per day, and I can’t wait to be a student again! It’s my gift to me.

Dismount!

My good writing friend, Sherryl, and I were Skyping about a seriously time-consuming writing project we’d like to take on together. Since we both spend our lives constantly trying to squeeze out five more spare minutes, we realized that something in our schedules would have to give.

“Where’s the dead wood in your life?” we asked each other. “What can be cut?”

Take a Closer Look

I thought about it a lot last night and couldn’t come up with much of anything. I have a couple of writing jobs, I hold offices in a couple organizations, and I lead a couple of church groups. Some are new responsibilities this year, and some I’ve helped with for years. I was clueless about what to cut.

Then I heard someone on the radio this morning say:

“If the horse has been dead ten years, it’s time to dismount.”

Put It Out to Pasture

I made a list of my paid and unpaid jobs then. Which lifeless “horse” was I still trying to make gallop? Which job or position that once was fun and satisfying and productive was now just an unproductive time drain? Which things had run their course? Where should I “dismount”?

Some of our time drains are just habits we’ve had for years. Or they’re community or school obligations we took on, and somehow we feel they’re life-time commitments.

Take a close look at your stable of horses. I hope this month to dismount a couple of dead horses so that I have time to ride a new one!

Follow-Up

This is a re-posted blog–and here’s the follow-up.  I did resign from two of my long-term volunteer activities. In both cases, people who were on the sidelines stepped forward to take the positions. I stopped doing free book critiques too.

The changes took nearly a year, but I now have five hours per day to work on my writing, compared to the one hour I had when I first wrote this blog post. It was hard saying “I can’t” and “no, thanks” many, many times. But I love the outcome! I love looking forward to my work days now. Our lives are all different, but I bet you could get rid of some dead horses too.

Can you name ONE that could be eliminated from your over-crowded life?