Consistent Blocks
In July, I passed the year mark of posting five days a week on this Substack.
Now, I want to stop.
But I won't.
Because stopping now is a practice I learned, and going when I want to stop is a practice I am learning.
The thing is, I do not actually want to stop. Something in me is telling me I must stop, because this is working.
There is a clash inside of me, because as a child I learned about what I might do based on hearing about what I was doing wrong.
I was scolded to be consistent when I stopped showing up.
I was chided to do small actions over time, not wait to do everything at the last minute.
I was also derided for leaving any task undone, told I should finish what I start.
Being scolded about consistency confused my inner systems. They may have been innately ready to drift and return, but when drifting was a condemned activity, I could never return for the shame of having wandered.
Being told to do small actions over time is not specific enough. I learned how to think about the whole thing, about doing it or not doing it, and being told to break it down into small steps did not teach me HOW to think about something in terms of its component parts and an order of emergence.
All that was reinforced by hearing that I couldn't leave a task undone. Well, which is it? Do I do small actions and leave the whole project undone for DAYS, drawing out the crime of not-having-yet-finished? Can I even begin something which will take more time than I have to give it? I can't leave it unfinished! Better not to start.
I have had to claim and hone my own way of allowing my work to emerge slowly over time, allowing myself to release it and do little bits at a time, and to understand the smaller parts for the way they are their own wholes.
I want to stop posting on Substack because it is working. The more it works, the more that will be asked of me, in terms of consistency, in terms of doing small parts, in terms of leaving an ever-growing whole unfinished, in terms of nothing ever being finished.
Business is a practice of meeting these notions and sorting through them. Am I truly burned out, or am I freshly alight with a flame that is blinding me? Am I avoiding failure or am I avoiding success?
Am I cringing away from outdated beliefs of what it means to "go to work," depriving myself of life's greatest delight, which is serving my clients?
Am I looking for something harder because this feels too easy to be allowed?
Am I seeking to fulfill an inner narrative that says I am always letting people down, that no one can count on me, and that I'm merely a burden?
I quietly watch these narratives, and my inner parent continues to show up, because at the end of the day, I have to do something with my time, and at the beginning of the day, this work consumes my thoughts and does not let go.
Sometimes I am digging through post archives at 1am, looking for something, anything, to schedule before 5am.
Other times I write seven posts in a day and thank my own good systemic sense that I have a way of getting them out to people without immediately bombing them all to social media.
When it's working, I add in new components and refine old ones. When it's easy, I allow myself to relax. When I want to, I do a little piece at a time, and with all of these thoughts, I have cultivated trust in myself as an entrepreneur, trust in myself to show up for you.
I have come to allow MANY people to receive what I am CONSISTENTLY delivering, what I have been delivering for 5 entire years. It makes me slightly woozy to type that, even still, but feelings like that pass, and I can handle it.
If I drop the ball, I know shame will wait to overtake me, and, as if I am the one who put the haunted house together, I calmly step out of the way of that jump-scare and pick the ball back up again.
There is no permanent record. There is no use to permanent shame. Here is today, with only so many hours of daylight, then it will be tonight, with only so many hours of dark. Today! My only chance to do something!
If I do my favorite thing, I'll probably reliably repeat it.