Fandom Snowflake 2020 - Challenge #7

[scrubjayspeaks]

Challenge #7: Promote/Rec/Sing the Praises of Yourself!

Well, I've previously introduced the various places my writing is available and promoted the work I most want attention for. Soooo...

I'm never very good at this sort of thing. Lately, the thing I take the most pride in, the thing that I can't really deny even when I'm feeling down on myself, is this: I try really hard. I'm reasonably clever, and I learn anything anyone cares to teach me, and I just...keep showing up. That's what I hold onto. Just...keep showing up, pay attention, and things will work out somehow.

Comments

[tjs_whatnot]

Seriously, TEACH ME YOUR WAYS! Showing up for things is what I suck at the most.

♥ ♥

[scrubjayspeaks]

I mean, it depends on if we're talking about physically showing up, or metaphorically/psychologically. But here are some of the strategies I use to be resilient in spite of life, the universe and everything:

For ensuring physically showing up happens, I rely on routines and preplanning. If I know I want to make it to an event, I arrange my clothing choices and anything I'll need to take with me the night before. If I minimize the choice making that has to happen in the moment, I'm less likely to burn out before I even leave the house. Routines help in the same way--I spend as few mental resources as possible on making decisions/debating choices/figuring things out in the moment. Doing the thing starts to happen on autopilot, which can be really useful if you have a brain that likes to sabotage everything because doing nothing feels safer.

For the more psychological version of showing up/trying again, I find it helpful to know WHY I care about doing something. A passing fancy isn't going to hold up well to any kind of setbacks. But if I know that doing X will get me Y, where Y is something I care about deeply or need, I'll keep showing up. This doesn't mean I won't fail sometimes, or fall out of a habit, or lose track of things. But it will mean that I keep circling back to an activity/idea/goal, because I still have the underlying motivation.

Something I read about recently and want to explore more is deliberately tying identity to an activity. (This came up in the book Indistractable by Nir Eyal.) The idea is that you construct an identity around doing something--I'm a vegetarian, I'm someone who bikes everywhere, I'm a writer, whatever--so that doing the activity is just...who you are. There's no debating, no need to summon up the willpower to stick with something daily. It's just what you do, because this is who you are. The only area where I have used this much is the mantra of "a writer writes," but I want to experiment with it for other things.