Catching That Snowball

Last week, you may have noticed, I didn’t post anything at all. I didn’t write any posts, I didn’t reply to any comments, I didn’t read any other blogs.

The reason for this is I was having a bad week. Work ramped up, and still is ramping up, and I was feeling more and more tired as the week went on. So, not only did I have less time to write, but I had less motivation. I also found myself struggling for an idea of what to write about… I was out of inspiration… I base these Monday Blogs on the philosophies binding my life right now and I felt like I had nothing new to add.

That leads me to today.

Really, if I break down last week to it’s core attributes, it really is just a case of snowballing; it’s a case of a few bad days crushing an otherwise good week. It’s a case of me feeling uninspired about one thing, and letting that leak into everything else. It’s a case of me thinking “I’ll read my comments later”, and then feeling like I’ve left them so long I can’t read them at all. It’s a case of guilt. That’s it really.

I’ve written about guilt before, Creative Guilt; having too much to do that you feel guilty for choosing one task over the other, and thus choosing no tasks at all. This guilt was a little different. This was based around procrastination and it was based on not keeping promises to myself. It was on leaving people unanswered and ignored after they had been kind enough to take an interest in me. The longer you leave something like this, the worse it gets. It’s like skipping a day at the gym, then skipping the week, then skipping the year. When you do come back it’s always that much harder; the momentum has gone and the inertia is carrying us in the wrong direction. Those few bad days started a chain reaction, they put a stop to my interests and they sent me on a spiral down to where I was a few months ago…

The thing is though; it’s OK.

It’s OK to take impromptu breaks. It’s OK to have bad days. It’s OK to have a week off. What matters, as my therapist would have said, is that you don’t stay there. What matters is that you get back up. What matters is you carry on. What matters is that you catch that snowball and stop it from gathering mass and speed.

So, that’s this weeks lesson; this weeks personal philosophy.

I’ve been learning to try and stop things before they have chance to start. By learning my triggers, by confronting my own thoughts, by challenging my self beliefs, I can keep myself in check. It’s been helping me to live a more motivated life, to make fear into an opportunity, to use my evidence of self. The thing is though we’re human, we’re not infallible and perfect. We make mistakes, we have set backs, and sometimes life gets in the way. So, I’m also learning that if I don’t succeed, then that’s OK too. What matters isn’t that you fall, it’s that you get back up. What matters is that no matter how big that snowball has gotten, no matter how long you’ve left it to roll, you can stop it in it’s tracks; you can choose to change it’s direction.

Sure, you might have let work pile up and it might have been harder than it was when you started, but it’s only going to get harder. By looking at how the difficulty of a task has increased, we only make it more daunting; oblivious to how that difficulty will only increase the longer we leave it. Starting now is almost always going to be better than starting later. It’s never too late to start, and it’s never too late to catch that snowball.

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