Step into the role

Uggh, seems like my brain just doesn't want to gel at the moment - I'm reading stuff, but it's just not sticking.

I worry about the "normal" working day, you know the 8-5 routine that businesses say is an effective use of time. Well I don't know anyone who can switch it on at 8 and turn it off at 5 and be productive for the gap in between. OK there are times when you can just churn through it, but is that a good use of the hours you have been given? I know that when I force myself to write during those times, actually these times, I will discard 9/10ths of what I write and edit like crazy the last bit. So why force it? Why bother?

Well, sometimes near enough really is good enough.

But sometimes I drive myself crazy trying to craft the perfect piece of prose when in reality it doesn't have to be perfect just completed. As I have found out many times a couple of days later when I've read back some of the words I thought I had written, only to find out they weren't as good as I thought.

Ah the life of a writer.

One of the comments my partner said to me in a fit of the frustrations was:

"Just do it, step into the role and be ..."

And of course that is what we should all be doing. Are you a painter or someone who would like to get the paints out when he has the time. Or what about the aspiring photographer who never remembers to take their camera with them. How are you going to be THAT person, you know the one you say you want to be, if you don't step into the role?

One of the reasons I feel is that we don't want to be "found out"

What if I'm not good enough we ask ourselves. What if they can tell I'm a fraud, that I'm really no good at this.

Says who?

As you know there will be people who tell you repeatedly that you are not good enough. If they shut up for five minutes, we all have our own little critic sitting on our shoulders whispering in our ears. Hear him? You're not good enough, who do you think you are?

Now, do me a favour, hold up your right hand. Now using your index finger I want you to reach across to your left shoulder and POKE HIM ON THE NOSE. Poke him hard enough and he's going to fall off.

Anyone else having a fit of the giggles at the thought our critic now sitting with a bruised rump and a sore nose on the floor behind us.

Right, now he's off nursing his bruised ego, we can get on with whatever it was we said we wanted to do.

We can do amazing things, if we allow ourselves to step into the role and be that person. And the beauty of it is - we can play more than one role if we have the desire and the passion to do so. And anyone who says we can't, well they're probably not stepping into their roles either. 

Which role are you going to step into today?