Self Doubt - Muse Repellant

Self Doubt - Muse Repellant

I’m so busy and always tired.  I know it’s mostly stress.  I work a fulltime job, like so many of us.  I raise three kids, mostly by myself.  I’m working on multiple projects and advance marketing and I really only get an hour, maybe two, a day to myself.  When I sit down and put on the headphones, sometimes there’s just no gas left in the tank or I have just enough fumes to stumble to the bed and start it all over again.

It’s these times, when I’m just too tired to write, the muse grows silent.  I feel her sadness from afar but it’s just not enough to guilt me into fulfilling our contract.  And when I’m alone, doubt creeps in.  How can I call myself a writer when I can’t even make myself sit down to pound out a 1000 words?  I’m no artist.  I have no ambition.  Winners never quit and it feels like quitting when I crawl off to sleep without having written a word.

I’ve been in a real funk lately.  I mocked the muse by attempted to describe her here in these pages.  Now my goddess is making me pay, I think. 

We creatives are tested over and over.  If I just wrote for my own pleasure there would be no pressure, but I don’t.  I want to do something with it.  I want to achieve something.  And so I created this blog, and my public persona, in order to announce to the universe that I will fucking do something with this cursed talent and I will find some measure of success, if only to rub the noses of everyone who said I couldn’t do it in the stank of accomplishment.  These public declarations are a way to keep me accountable to my destiny.

So how do you deal with self doubt?  Well there’s something I’ve found that works for me but it’s a gamble.  I read my older stuff.  Something I wrote and maybe didn’t finish usually.  I always seem to find something that actually surprises me.  I typically walk away feeling good about my writing. 

I hear a lyrical, tittering laugh.  She stands back watching me fondly.  She’s proud of me in those moments and, after I’ve closed the old file, I turn to see her smiling.  She beams, then waggles a finger at me.  The gesture says, “Silly child.  You shouldn’t have doubted either of us.” 

My muse embraces me then, her lips on mine, my heart falling into a symbiotic rhythm with hers.  All my doubt seems silly now.  This is what I’m meant for.  This is where I belong.

Listening to: The Dresden Dolls – Good Day Live