First things first – I think I’ve finally figured out how to add comments/navigation to posts, so all being well, those things SHOULD show up at the bottom of all my blog posts from now on. If they don’t…I’m just gonna throw the computer out of the window and live a technology-free life.

Moving on…

Sticking with my anxiety theme from last week, I’d like to talk about giving yourself some credit. Perhaps, like me, you’re attempting to make writing your full-time job, but until the lottery gods decide to bless you with the jackpot, you still have to work a normal job alongside looking after your family/various pets, all while attempting to fit your writing in around everyday life.

It’s so hard. Sometimes – especially if Little Terror has been up several times in the night and I’m exhausted – I just want to cry at the sheer magnitude of it all. It’s at times like these I seriously consider just resigning all my writing goals/dreams to the compost heap, getting an office job, and just rolling with the 9-5 lifestyle til I retire. I feel like there’s never enough time in the day for everything I want to accomplish. And then if I do manage to write, or update my website or whatever, I still feel like I’m just shaving ice chips off an extremely large and ambitious ice sculpture (no, I don’t know where that idea came from and no, I don’t ice sculpt as a hobby…although maybe I should …*makes mental note to research ice sculpture*).

This kinda fits into my post from last week about time anxiety – what I’d like you to stop and think about today is giving yourself more credit for what you HAVE achieved.

You’ve probably accomplished a hell of a lot more than you think you have – whether that’s during the day, or over the course of a month, or even a year. While I was making notes about building my new website, I stumbled across a document filled with all blog post ideas, most of which I can reuse for this website. Thank you, Zena from five years ago! I’d completely forgotten about it, but because I put the work in then, I can start to build on that now.

I also decided to start working on some old story ideas to see where they take me – and when I opened up those files, I discovered I had quite a few notes more than I originally thought. Will they be useful? Who knows – but it’s a start, and I’m no longer just staring at a blank page.

So no matter how big or overwhelming your task seems to be – whether that’s writing, or painting, or a project at work – take a deep breath and remember that 1) you can do this and 2) you’ve probably laid the foundations and done a lot more work than you realise.

What would you like to give yourself more credit for? Have you ever rediscovered a lost piece of work and discovered you can reuse it to help you now? Let me know!

Z x