trying new things

Under the category of #writerproblems and, perhaps, #firstworldproblems, I’ve been reading a ton lately.

(That’s not the problem.)

(I always read a ton, but for about the past month or two, I’d been rereading my own book every night to edit and proof and edit and proof some more, so I hadn’t made a dent in my tbr. I’m now taking care of that problem.)

But I’ve been reading a few books that aren’t what I do—sinister and intense MC books, cute and funny light reads, stories with trans characters, and so on.

And now I want to write all those books.

Then I remind myself that books don’t just magically appear. Even if I sit at the laptop for hours and hours and days and days (as I already do), I still have to put in the time. I simply can’t do everything at once, and I’ve already had to make some decisions on where to spend that time I do have. I have ideas that I’m super excited about, and stories I’m enthusiastic to finish.

The problem is just that there are more ideas than I can write.

I suppose that’s not totally a problem. It would be worse to have no ideas whatsoever.

But I think there’s a deeper issue here, and it’s one of my basic one: that of enough-ness. That of not only not feeling like I am enough, but that what I have is enough. What I do is enough. And there’s some FOMO in here. If I pick one idea, I’m missing out on some other idea that could just kick butt.

This feeling of uncertainty causes anxiety. Like I’m not where I’m supposed to be. Like I’m supposed to be doing more.

The only answer I know—and the reason for this blog post—is to tell myself that I just have to enjoy the process. I have to enjoy the moment. I can enjoy the moment of writing whatever. The moment of reading whatever. I can enjoy the fact that someone else wrote the story.

That in every moment there are always infinite choices of what to do, how to feel, what to think, and so on. I can’t get too hung up on that. I can just do the best I can.