Start. Start now. – my deep focus creative run

I’m slightly shivering as we speak. That’s when I know I’m about to do something meaningful, albeit uncomfortable. 

I had a strange dream last night. I am somewhere with my bike, picking up furniture and objects from the garbage. Around me, an amalgamation of discarded materials. As I am sifting through the junk, I have a hard time selecting what to pack, what to leave behind. I also realize that I am late, but I can’t rush the process.

Eventually, I get drunk while at it, which leads me to pick up the camera and pose with my finds (visualize Ana with a disturbing grin, laying among the trash,) images that I post to Insta stories. Afterward, I’m hauling some stuff to my mom’s place, worrying about how behind schedule I am. When she shows up, I excuse myself for not having time to clean up the mess I just made. I have to leave promptly but I’ll come back to pick everything up. She isn’t happy. She also warns me that I missed the last train. I grab the timetable: my only option now is the train at seven am. That’s annoying, but perhaps I can use the tardy hours for organizing the living room? I hate clutter. The next thing I know, I’m looking up Insta-stories from the previous night, and cringing at my self-exposed drunkness. There are many but I decide to delete just the most ridiculous story. Seeing things all over the place disorients me. The sun has set, the train is gone, and my mind’s eye is far away, on the horizon, in which direction I should be cycling.

*

I put the pen down and took a sip of my coffee. I hadn’t expected to start my morning pages with this dream. I never know what I’m going to write when I sit down each morning – the only demand being that I fill up three pages of my notebook. This narrative was puzzling enough to catch my attention. Now that I looked more closely, there it was, symbolically: perfectionism delaying my life, and, once again, the tendency to get distracted by irrelevant things. The slight discomfort in my chest was the sign that, yes, the dream struck a chord deep within. The garbage, though. There was something about the amount of crap. Could it be that I’m hoarding too much lately? 

*

Yesterday a fellow blogger started a Blogmas, something I have been fantasizing about doing for a while. But, my perfectionism. I could never publish a post a day. I review everything I write a thousand times before posting. With Blogmas you’re supposed to put out one piece into the world every single day from the first of December up until Christmas. No multiple days for editing and improving, no time to think and rethink every word. How could I respond to all the demands of life and write at the same time? Then I pictured the garbage. My multiple interests. The distractions. All the things; important, and not. 

By letting go of something. I can only do this if I let something go, I thought, whether it be striving for perfection or a non-essential appointment. By prioritizing *this*. By letting go of the waste. 

So for twenty-five days, I will be sharing my writing on Instagram. Every day I will post an image accompanied by a story of a minimum of 300 words about my creative process. My goal is to be writing and creating content full-time by the end of next year. So in December, I will write about everything concerning this enterprise – the blog & the videos -, my artistic process, how I remain focused and fulfilled as a multi-passionate creator. How I make it work. These stories are not going to be a masterpiece. They’re going to be a practice, they’ll help me focus on my craft, a preparation for the year to come. I know that many of you are on creative quests, so I hope the experiment serves my readers, too. Blogmas – my deep-focus creative run – is starting now, and I edited this piece times enough to feel like I’m cheating myself already.

(this piece was written for Blogmas 2020)

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