Pausing the weekly Q&A events // Slogs and showing up vs. Shape of the idea

March 22, 2022 · living

Hi :). After 13 weekly Q&As, I’m putting them on temporary pause. They’ve been a blast, and I plan to restart them as soon as I’m able.

But for now, I’m chronically overwhelmed, and the best thing I can do for myself is to take a pause and put a bit of extra slack into my calendar.

(If you have questions that I can help with, the async AMA channel remains open.)

If you’ve been following along for a while, you’ll note that this is a case where I’m fully aware that I should keep showing up to reach the other side of the slog.

But that’s at odds with my (hopefully temporary) constraints of time/energy/attention, which changes the shape of good ideas for me, right now.

And that instead of banging my head against a wall, it’s better to accept being “suboptimal” for now.

(If you’re curious, I originally believed that these were problems of personal sloppiness and/or simple overload. But after getting a coach and fully overhauling how I run my days, the problems were still getting/feeling worse instead of better. From a rational perspective, I know that I “should” just endure the slog, but based on how my emotional state has been trending, I think that’s just a recipe for a bigger breakdown later; better to pause and fix the engine now.)

On the bright side, it’s neat to see how these little ideas/frameworks from recent months are starting to click together (even if they’re all a bit undeveloped and imperfect). 

So maybe T. S. Eliot was right when he said:

Anxiety is the handmaiden of creativity.

Also, part of the reason for this whole situation is the simple good news that the main business (usefulbooks.com, new website) is going well and requiring more from me (as well as the recent paid/private OOC group), so some of my other personal projects (like the Q&A events) need to shift a bit in order to keep me fresh for those bigger priorities.

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