Every time I sit down to write, something happens.
And that something isn’t generally “I IMMEDIATELY GET INTO A CREATIVE FLOW AND WRITE SOMETHING AMAZING, HOORAY.”
It’s more like… I see something in the kitchen or living room that needs tidying up, or Cyrus (my new kitten) decides that it’s time to play and/or destroy something, or I remember something important that I feel compelled to address immediately.
And often, I give in to those distractions.
Because to be honest, it’s easy to give in to those distractions. What’s calling me away from writing is usually a manageably sized task with a finite beginning and end (unlike, say, this massive 100k-word thing I’m writing), and finishing this manageably sized task will give me a much-needed dopamine boost. It’s a task that needs to get done anyway, so why not take care of it now? And the longer I ignore the task, the guiltier I will feel — I know that just getting it over with will alleviate the guilt.
But… where’s the guilt for us?
Eventually, if I don’t write for a long period of time (like, say, several months or a year), I’ll start to feel a gnawing edge of guilt about neglecting my writing. But if I skip out on one writing session (even if I skipped out on yesterday’s, too), it doesn’t feel like that big of a deal.
I don’t feel that guilt immediately like I do when I look down into Cyrus’ big kitten eyes that are begging me to come play with him.
And it doesn’t feel as heavy as it does when I think about my cluttered little hobbit house and how it could/should look more like the ones in fashionable magazines or on Insta.
And it doesn’t provide the pressure that a ringing phone or upset text/email can inject into your life.
We all experience guilt for different reasons. Maybe you’re a people-pleaser like me, and you are terrified of letting someone else down. Maybe you were taught to be one thing (e.g., a tidy person with a sparkling-clean house) and you’re acting like another thing (e.g., a messy slob with a sink full of crusty dishes). Maybe you killed a guy (I don’t know your life).
My point is, there are a lot of reasons to feel guilty.
And… despite what it might sound like, I’m not here to give you one more.
I’m just curious — why do we feel more guilty about things that ultimately matter less?
When I first adopted Cyrus, we started putting him into my office every night (with plenty of food, water, and toys, as well as a litter box) so that he and Momo (our 8-year-old cat) could get to know each other slowly and under our supervision. (Also so that he wouldn’t destroy all of our furniture and eat all of my plants.)
I realized that if I kept him in my office for a couple of extra hours in the morning, I could get tons more writing done with about 1,000% better focus. So if I got up at 6a.m. to write, I’d let Cyrus out of the office at 7a.m. or 8a.m.
But when I began sharing this with people, responses were… mixed. Some people were shocked and upset, enough so that I went to the internet and did a search for whether or not what I was doing was okay.
The internet being the internet, turns out that what I was doing was just fine in the eyes of some people, and animal abuse in the eyes of others.
What stuck with me most afterward was the word “abuse”. And since then, I’ve let Cyrus out of my office immediately when I get up each morning, and he climbs my legs and crawls on my keyboard and spills my coffee/tea/water and meows at me to play with him and bats at my hoodie strings and pounces on Momo and tips over his water dish and knocks over the trash. Often all within a single one-hour span.
My writing, quite honestly, has suffered. My focus is constantly broken and I’m producing maybe half of the wordcount I was doing before.
But at least I don’t feel guilty.
Words & warmth,
Sarah