I can’t call it procrastination.
Procrastination is when you need to change the kitty litter or take out the garbage but you don’t because you just don’t want to. Procrastination is when you have to renew your driver’s license but the thought of standing in a two-hour line at the DMV just makes you cringe. Procrastination is when you put off doing ordinary, every day tasks because you don’t want to do them.
Putting off writing when you know you have something to write about, but just can’t quite get the pen to paper can’t be called procrastinating. When you put off being creative, it tugs at you emotionally. You can feel lazy, stupid and beat yourself up over it. It’s not that you don’t want to be creative – because 99% of the time you really really do – it’s just that for some reason you can’t.
You might even try to trick yourself into sitting in front of the computer to write and try every trick in the book to jump start your brain to no avail. Coffee, baths, naps, they just don’t seem to work. You don’t write, you put it off but the idea of having to stays in your mind and heart all the time. And so does the guilt.
We need to find another word for this, instead of procrastination. We need to find a gentler, kinder name for it. One that doesn’t make you feel guilty when you use it or conjure up images of laziness or stupidity. One that understands that you want to be creative but you just have some kind of block in the moment.
We need a word that gives comfort like a big warm fuzzy sweater that you put on when you’re cold. Something that hugs us and lets us know it’s OK to feel this way because it happens to everyone who is creative.
And we need that word now.
The Chronicles of Girl at Play began in April 2001 as a way for me to chronicle my leaving a successful corporate position to become a self-employed writer.
