{"id":4568,"date":"2012-08-08T06:00:03","date_gmt":"2012-08-08T11:00:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/?p=4568"},"modified":"2012-08-08T06:00:03","modified_gmt":"2012-08-08T11:00:03","slug":"motivational-quitter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/?p=4568","title":{"rendered":"Motivational Quitter"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>I\u2019ve never had a moment in my life where I stared down at the empty page, threw my hands up in disgust, and declared that I was done writing forever.<\/p>\n

Now, having said that, I have to be honest. Nearly every day or, at the very least, several times a week, I quit.<\/p>\n

Pressure tends to build up slowly with me. I take on too many projects, or several projects converge at once, unplanned, and I end up in the middle of it all overwhelmed. Up until that moment, I walk around telling myself \u201cI\u2019ve got this. No problem.\u201d Until it all goes bad, and the number one priority in my life becomes whether or not it\u2019s time to harvest my crops in a Facebook game.<\/p>\n

I become evasive. I put things off. I wander around the house, skirting piles of dirty laundry, thinking about ordering pizza for dinner because there\u2019s no food and all the dishes are dirty, and singing Disney songs to the cats. Line edits are due, my word count is behind, two Confabulator posts and a short story are overdue, and several e-mails need attention.<\/p>\n

So, I quit.<\/p>\n

Simple as that. A light bulb goes off in my head that I\u2019ve overcommitted myself. I don\u2019t have to be part of the Confabulator Caf\u00e9. I quit. Sorted. I won\u2019t write those posts or that short story. I\u2019ll just tell them I\u2019m taking a few weeks off.<\/p>\n

The relief from that decision is incredible. The pressure is off.<\/p>\n

And then I write the posts and turn them in.<\/p>\n

Line edits for my editor? Recently, I spent the day before they were due mentally composing the e-mail to let her know I needed more time. Once I decided to do that, well, I finished them the next day and turned them in on time.<\/p>\n

I know, it sounds like I\u2019m tricking myself into getting my job done. Maybe it\u2019s a little game I play with myself, but really, I don\u2019t think it is. I\u2019m like John Locke from Lost<\/em>. Don\u2019t tell me what I can\u2019t do. But it\u2019s me I\u2019m talking to, not someone else. If somebody else told me I couldn\u2019t do something, I\u2019d shrug it off. But the minute I tell myself I can\u2019t do it? It pisses me off.\u00a0 And I do it anyway. There\u2019s no trick. I truly believe I can\u2019t do it.<\/p>\n

So. No, I\u2019ve never quit. And yes. I quit every day.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s the only way I can get things done.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I\u2019ve never had a moment in my life where I stared down at the empty page, threw my hands up in disgust, and declared that I was done writing forever. Now, having said that, I have to be honest. Nearly every day or, at the very least, several times a week, I quit. Pressure tends […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[577,641,895],"class_list":["post-4568","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-writers-life","tag-john-locke","tag-lost","tag-quitting"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4568","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4568"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4568\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4568"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4568"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4568"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}