Diving in
Do you remember going swimming when you were a kid? Or perhaps you swim now that you are an adult? I think I’m dredging up this memory of childhood swimming, as I sit writing this on a grey chilly day here in Melbourne, because I am thinking of my childhood in northern New South Wales and how incredibly hot it would get in summer - hot enough for sidewalks to blister the souls of bare feet - and how good it was to be able to go swimming in that almost frightening heat.
But as good as the cool water felt, as good as I knew it would feel, there were always a few seconds before I jumped into the pool where I had a moment’s resistance to that first breathtaking shock of my overheated body plunging into the cold water.
Do you ever feel a resistance to starting a piece of creative work?
I certainly have. I’ll be overtaken by a rush of blood to my head – a flash of inspiration - and decide to CREATE!
I’ll set to, enthusiastically blocking out time in my calendar to make room to dash off this masterpiece, and quickly assemble my materials, and draw up a to-do list.
And then I’ll pause. I’ll start to dither: That short and useful to-do list starts to seed elaborate excel spreadsheets, with goals and timelines minutely plotted and garishly colour coded. My desk and bookshelves will be cleaned and organised to within an inch of their lives.
I’ll suddenly feel shy of the project, my new darling that, just a short while before, called so beguilingly to me. Having brought myself to the point of starting, I’ll resist actually getting started.
I’m not the only one who does this. Other creatives of various stripes have admitted the same strange tendency to hesitate before plunging into the pool, even though they know the water could feel great once they’re in.
So, what is this strange resistance to doing something that you love? Why pull back from something that inspires you, that you may yearn to do? What sits behind this?
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