I woke up today feeling mentally ragged. I was feeling confused and fuzzy. I couldn’t identify my mood, if there was anything wrong, I just felt off. Unable. My brain seemed to be shouting at me in static. I have come to recognize this static as the herald of a bad ADHD day. I was an hour late to my routine – I didn’t even get out of bed with intent until nearly 9 am, when I prefer to be seated and ready to roll, writing, by 8 am. Today, I knew it would be a battle to get to the keyboard.

So how did I get started today, when the static was deafening? I stuck to my routine, even though it was an hour late. I picked up The Right to Write by Julia Cameron. I opened it while sitting at my desk. Immediately, my computer seemed to be mocking me. It was just there outside of my left side field of vision, and I felt threatened by it and all of the unstarted and unfinished work I would find when I woke it up.

I moved my home base for reading. I took the book out to the love seat. I read 4 or 5 chapters today, just powering through until I could feel the static begin to clear and my thoughts begin to untangle from a knotted jumble to a gentle serpentine. I let the pressure to perform melt away. I let the idea of writing a book or finishing anything at all just float away. I decided to redefine my idea of successfully writing to just that – successfully writing. Sitting here, as I am doing now, dumping my brain out onto a page. That’s all I need to do. I say “I need to” but not in that harsh way that I used to say it. I used to try to flog myself to the page with “needs and shoulds” instead of just writing for the joy and clarity that it brings.

Today while I was reading, I read about creative monsters. These are people who have stifled or even mocked or insulted my creativity. I started remembering the wounds to my creativity, wounds from the past. But at the same time I had those thoughts, I was so SO sick of thinking them. I am so tired of replaying my past hurts and I feel a ferocious desire to MOVE THE “F” ON. MTFO. There is no legitimate reason for me to let the misery of a person in the past define my future. To let some words that some careless person let fly 20 or more years ago continue to make me bleed. It’s craziness. And I just thought, I release that. I am finally sick of my own bullshit. I am so sick of all of my “reasons.”

Because the kicker is that they aren’t reasons at all. They are excuses. I really believe that reasons are few but excuses are plentiful. And in light of that, I’m just going to get to work.