One of the most common but also most useless creativity tips I’ve even been given, given to someone else, or seen literally anywhere is “you just gotta do it!” I’m incredibly guilty of giving that one out, even if I do try to couch it in terms of building discipline and creating a routine you can rely on. It all boils down to “just do the thing!” in the end. It’s not a very good explanation and building it piecemeal via the whole “make time to write every day, and slowly challenge yourself to write more in that time or expand that time so you can create more” is a bit more helpful, but it ultimately doesn’t really do much beyond make you capable of the mechanics of the work you’re doing. Generally, you need some kind of goal or target to inform why you’re creating in the first place since just wanting to create (or to have created) isn’t always enough to push you through the difficulty of forming good creative habits. You need something that speaks to you or that creates drive within you to help you over that hump. Once you’re in the habit, though, it gets a lot easier. Discipline will carry you as long as you maintain it and maintaining it is so much easier than building it. Unfortuantely, you might wind up in a situation like me where you’re maintaining your discipline just to keep your discipline working rather than because you’re trying to make progress towards a specific goal and you wind up writing just because you are in the habit. The habit fuels itself and its own maintenance, even if the larger purpose it once served is no longer there.

It’s all a bit recursive and I’m having a difficult time figuring out how I feel about it (I just wrote about it the other day and I’m already writing about it again) because I’m not sure where all of this is coming from or why I’m suddenly feeling this way. At least part of it can be chalked up to my depression being momentarily worse thanks to my anitdepressant withdrawal and inexplicable shoulder/neck pain making it difficult for me to get adequate sleep, but I think the rest of it might just be burnout. I’ve been working on fumes for years and I can’t even remember when I first had the thought that the only thing keeping me writing was inertia. It was long enough ago that it disappears into the muddled haze that was my emotionally challenged period from 2019 to 2023 (when I was dealing with the worst of my family stuff). Hell, I even struggled with the idea back during the worst of my depression in my twenties, when I couldn’t figure out why I just kept going, day after day, despite wanting nothing more than to give up. I just kept going because I was already going. I kept on keeping on because I was in the habit. I didn’t have a reason then and I still don’t have one now.

The same is true of my writing. I write because I write every day. Sure, I’d absolutely miss it if I stopped, but leaving an awful job taught me that this is true of anything you’ve grown used to, good or bad. I was happy to leave my terrible old job but I still missed it for a while after I left. It was still a good thing for me to change jobs. I missed pistachios when I stopped eating them (turns out I’m mildly allergic) even though I always mysteriously felt awful for a day after I’d eat some. Writing this blog, and writing in general aren’t unhealthy for me, though, and while it does take some effort to write these posts, to maintain a buffer, it’s not necessarily a bad thing that it takes me some effort. Sometimes it is good to have things you need to work at. Sometime’s it’s good to sweat a little bit. Literally or metaphorically.

I can’t help but feel like this wouldn’t be an issue if I hadn’t had the last year and a half that I’ve had, of awful pain, bodily degredation, rampant exhaustion, and unfortunate attempts at antidepressants. I don’t know I’ve ever felt as worn out and worn down as I feel right now and while I’ve still got plenty of stuff to look forward to or that I want to do (the Switch 2, more Final Fantasy 14 stuff, my D&D games, travel to visit my friends, read some books, and so on), I feel every scrap of energy as it leaves me and am hitting a point where writing these posts sometimes leaves me so tired I need to sit down. I mean, even setting aside the fact that I’m at a standing desk and two months of not working or working only eight hour days have left me unable to stand at my desk as long as I used to and have softened my feet rather considerably (especially on the back of actually sitting at my desk for most of the last four months of 2024, before I realized that the poor seating arrangement is what was causing my nerve issues in my arms and hands). As has failing to do my workout routines. There’s a lot of things that will slowly improve as time passes, assuming I recover from the withdrawal, get some sleep, get my shoulder problem dealt with, and don’t wind up putting in long, horrible days in the office that undo all of that improvement like I did in January and February.

I don’t know. I’m not making any decisions right now, that much is clear, but I can’t help but feel like continuing to work might not be the best answer for me, vis-a-vis this blog. It’s not really pausing anything if I just set aside the questions and keep writing every day. It’s not really resting if I’m putting in a ton of effort to rebuild and maintain my buffer when I’m already so tired that sitting down in my chair in my warm office will have me dozing off the first time I blink. I wish I had some answers or a way to figure out what I need to do to resolve things in the most healthy, expedient manner for myself so that I could actually recover and get back to doing stuff I used to want to do and now… well, sort of want to do, except my heart’s not really in it. I don’t have any of that, though. All I’ve got is the discipline to keep writing come hell or high water and a mind full of self-doubt that I’ve never really been able to banish in regards to any facet of my life. I don’t know if I’m going to write about any of this again, at least not until I’ve got some kind of answer, but if the updates ever stop for more than a weekend or a holiday then, well… I guess that’s that. Until then, I’ll just keep on writing on.