motivation follows action

Hey all y'all! It's the BigTime Blogging Challenge. I'm writing every day in July to celebrate my blog's three year anniversary! Join me - write your post, link it up with mine, leave some love for blogging friends in the form of comments!

It's the day for Hometown Attractions! I have been wanting to write this post for ages, but I'm still not ready yet, I need to go visit one more place and get one more pic before I do. So please share about yours if you want, I'm going to share a little bit about one of the books I've been reading!

So this is the book club book for the 30th and it's really good. Do you follow my Instagram? I posted this pic a few days ago saying I'd read it tomorrow:

Haha, well, I finally read it and it was so good. It was talking about how procrastination is one of three main problems for writers. I do not have this problem for writing as much as I do in other areas, mainly, exercising. Case in point is that on any given day I'd rather write than go for a run or even go to my favorite yoga or dance class. So as I read it, I was thinking exercise every time it talked about procrastinating writing.

Here are some of my favorite lines with some commentary:

It turns out procrastination is not typically a function of laziness, apathy or a lack of work ethic, as it is often assumed to be. It's a neurotic self-defense behavior, that develops to protect a person's sense of worth.

This one got me thinking. I always thought I wasn't going running or to yoga because binging on Shameless on Netflix sounded like so much more fun. Is this saying that maybe I don't think I deserve to feel healthier/look better? Something to check with myself here for sure.

We want to write. We do. It's just scary and hard work. And usually disappointing. Our writing is rarely as good as we want it to be. My writing life spans eighteen years, and in that time there have only been a handful of things I've written that I'm happy with. The rest make me cringe. But it's the possibility that we may blow our own minds that propels us. We're junkies hanging out for hit.

This one I was thinking about writing. Later on in the book she goes on to say that we just keep writing, and it's almost always crap, and that every once in a while that we do something amazing, mind-blowing even. I actually felt like that a few days ago when I wrote the piece about being on both sides of Black Lives Matter and Blue Lives Matter. I was so scared to post that. So stressed, like palms sweating. But then it got shared by six friends and I realized that I had crafted something that was pretty decent. That's why we write. Because there's a chance it might happen. Usually it doesn't, but every now and then, yes.

So remember: do the writing before having the shower, making the coffee or having a wee. Do the writing first. Anything you are tempted to procrastinate with, write down on a pice of paper and use it as a reward. Yes, you can dust the vase cabinet. After you have written for an hour. Chances are that the vase cabinet dusting won't seem as urgent then. And you may even keep writing. Because you will find that motivation follows action. And as uninspired, self-loathing, not-in-the-mood and knackered as you feel when you sit down to write, if you force yourself to write, you mind find you do more than you expect.

I'm reading:  Do the exercising first. Then you can write, then you can do the dishes, then you can surf the interwebs, just do the yoga or dancing or running - first thing, wake up and just get it out of the way.

Super good take on procrastination and also the book is really good in general, highly recommend. I'll definitely be back talking about it on the 30th, but maybe before then, too!

Happy Sunday, friends!

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