This Instagram message from Glennon Doyle stopped me mid-scroll:
I don’t think of myself as an artist. I have trouble calling myself a writer, even though I’ve been paid to write for my entire career. I’ve always called myself something else — like a reporter or journalist or marketer or content creator.
But I’m exploring how to own the label of “writer,” and doing it while sheltering-in-place has been so much harder than I thought it would be. Like millions of others, when I heard we had to shelter in place, my striving mind switched into overdrive. I thought I’d finish a million home improvement projects, and start churning out blogs and social media content for The Land of Woo.
Instead, I’m still struggling with the blog’s look and feel, my social media efforts are non-existent, and I’m not posting nearly as much as I’d like to be.
I love Glennon’s IG post because I’m reading her book, Untamed, and these words came directly from a writer who is openly admitting that she is struggling right now.
She hasn’t written a word.
And she shares this comment:
Please don’t forget that the Not Creating is a crucial part of the Creating. We are in a cocoon time and in there- the only work to be done is: surrender.
Glennon Doyle
Please be relentlessly tender with yourself.
It’s not that I want to stop creating altogether. It’s that I wanted someone to tell me it was ok to create at a caterpillar’s pace. Now I feel more at peace, knowing that this slow becoming is part of the process of creating.