I originally wrote this post last Thursday, but was too nervous to post it. Urged on by Brandi and Liz, here it is…
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Guys, can I be honest for a minute? I’m spent. Creatively, emotionally, I’m run dry. I feel like I’ve been phoning it in around here for the last month or so. I’m not sure what happened, but between the stresses and panic of so many life changes and an absorbent amount of work on my shoulders over the last few months, I’ve been struggling. Not just with the blog, but with everything I have on my plate. And I think I reached my breaking point earlier tonight.
I’m a perfectionist. Always have been, always will. That familiar saying, “don’t sweat the small stuff”? I can’t do that. It’s against every bone in my body, every fiber of my being. I’m simply not wired that way. I obsess about the details to the point that it drives me crazy. I will lay in bed for hours wide awake drilling myself on how to fix/improve/perfect the tiniest and seemingly insignificant thing. I like to tell myself this is why I will be a good designer – I am meticulous, observant, and extremely detail oriented. Other times, I think it will be my demise. I always want to be/do/create/etc. my very best, and I settle for nothing less. I have a hard time letting things go when I know I can do better.
I suppose my point is this: I’m not happy with this blog right now. I haven’t been for a long time. I want to be. But for right now, it gives me obsessive panicky thoughts. I have changed a lot over the last few years of blogging, and with all of these changes, I’ve never quite re-figured out what I want for SLG. I used to know, but I’ve drifted so far from where I started, that I have no idea now.
This is not goodbye. Not even close. And you know what, who knows, I might be back to posting regularly again tomorrow. All I’m saying is don’t worry about me. I’m still plugging away, I’m happy, I’m healthy. I’m just taking a breather. I have other important things on my plate right now that need my full perfectionist attention. ;) I need to temporarily let go of something.
Sometimes all you need to recharge is an evening to yourself, a weekend away, a huge bowl of the good ice cream. Too long I’ve been going on that assumption, and that assumption is wrong. This drain I’m feeling, it runs deeper than that. And I think in order for me to be happy with and unashamed of what I’m putting out into the world again, I need distance. Too often I feel like I’m not doing enough, and I need to do more. To do more – and to do quality more – right now, I need to do less. That probably sounds very backwards. But right now, to me, it makes perfect sense. I need to refuel hardcore. I’m like those re-chargeable batteries; in theory, you can plug them into the wall and charge them over and over again, but that’s never quite the case. The little green “fully charged” light might turn on at the end of each cycle, but each time, their life grows shorter and shorter and shorter and each time, they perform just a little bit less than their original potential. They always, eventually, wear thin. That’s where I am right now.
It’s not that I see the blog as a burden, because it’s not. I love blogging and I love SLG. But in my current frame of mind, that one that’s slowly crumbling under pressure, stress, learning to be a “grown-up”… in that frame of mind, blogging has temporarily been feeling like something I have to do, something I need to do, must do. I haven’t published an entry is near two weeks, and you know what? It makes me panic. I don’t know why. It just does. The end of last week came, I hadn’t posted since Monday, and I honestly panicked. It’s ridiculous, I know. But I think that panic ran deeper than just the act of not blogging for more than 4 days. It’s the principle of it. It was like, to me, not sticking to my (already incredibly loose) schedule, I had somehow failed. I had let people down, I had let me down. It’s funny, I posted this quotation over on k. at the beginning of the month: “An essential aspect of creativity is not being afraid to fail.” It’s been something on my mind quite often recently. I am afraid of failure. I’m constantly afraid of it. I’ve been afraid of it my whole life. And it’s exhausting. I need to find myself again, and I need to rebuild. I need to get to a place where I can, not necessarily, not sweat the small stuff, but to a place where I can panic and stress out and obsess in my own totally neurotic but totally natural to me way, but be able to step back and then let it go.
This all really means very little to you guys. In all likelihood, I probably didn’t need to say all of this. But I also really, really did. Letting this out already feels like a small weight has been lifted. If I’m blogging again tomorrow, that’s cool, I jumped the gun and posted this is a moment of weakness. But if I’m not, and a few weeks go by, I hope you all will understand and know that this is something I needed to do to regain a small piece of my sanity.
Until then, I’ll be around twitter & instagram, as always. Don’t be strangers, guys. :)
