No one is lazy. Humans have a propensity to do things.
No one is even a procrastinator. Procrastination is either knowing that the energy is not right for potency (in this way, you gather your energy for the task) or knowing that the task is not right (and then you simplify, delete, automate, or delegate).
So when we aren’t doing things we’re supposed to be doing, there is data there in that behavior.
Lately I’ve been trying to figure out why I won’t take action on some really basic stuff that has already been decided. One of those things is to put together a proper email list from all my sources of people. I’ve been using a combination of Writer MBA, Substack, and BackerKit to reach my people. It works fine, but I’m intent on building my list more aggressively in the near future.
Another is fixing my website store. It’s technically functional but I need to install a few plugins, add new listings, and you know, actually tell people about new things happening and give them the link.
These things have been decided. But my emotional being wakes up every day and says, “No no no no no no no no not today.”
For a while I assumed that I was too busy. I then fell back on my usual approach to making myself move…The inner work. Inner work involves using healing tools to change my energy…But I couldn’t put my finger on what the thing I needed to heal was!
Yesterday I was journaling about this (again!) and I wrote down, “I don’t want to be visible because then people will see all my mistakes.”
- Books that aren’t out yet
- Missed deadlines
- Things formatted improperly
- Broken website links
To be honest, that list is probably a stretch. The first two are real things that I owe people and feel a ton of shame and guilt about. The other two are…I mean, most entrepreneurs are struggling with formatting and broken website links.
Since 2024 started, I’ve been getting regular panic attacks and heightened anxiety that keeps me up at night. I haven’t had to deal with either since 2018 or so. I attributed some of it to having a newborn (I gave birth to my second child in late 2023), but more recently I had to admit that the anxiety at least was work-related.
I realized I had been avoiding selling (which is a necessary part of a business) to avoid the questions and judgement around what I was working on and why I wasn’t working on the overdue things in my business fast enough.
We are hitting conference season which means I need extra cash for travel expenses and all sorts of other stuff…But my cash reserves are the lowest they’ve been in years.
At the same time, I have overdue content and books to send. And I’m doing them! But not posting about them to the people I owe them to. Because I don’t want to be asked about the things that are not done yet. Because I don’t have a clear timeline that I’m confident I can hit.
And this cycle makes me less visible, which makes me less revenue, which makes me more anxious, which makes me less able to do my work, which makes more people frustrated with me…
It’s been a terrible cycle of avoidance that has ramped up all summer. The life stage I’m at + political season doesn’t help, I’m sure, nor do summer slumps in sales, but those external factors are not the thing. The thing is a freeze response.
Because I don’t know how to fight the very reasonable and true things people are saying about me. My books are unbearably and unreasonably past their deadlines.
And I’m not going to flight from my customers. I want to stay in this industry, so that’s part of it, but also I am going to get those books done and I am going to send them out. The decision is made, the work is in progress.
And I don’t want to fawn anymore. When I first realized I was pregnant, I tried to give the timelines and deadlines that people wanted, even knowing that my health issues were scary and unpredictable and I wasn’t going to push myself. That went…Poorly. But also, saying that I didn’t know but I’d get to it was creating open loops in people’s minds that the people pleaser in me wanted to appease.
All that was left of the trauma responses was freeze.
I’ve been sitting on a ton of stuff the last month that I just need to upload. It’s stuff that I’m afraid to deliver, even though people obviously want me to deliver.
Because it’s easier to freeze.
Because it feels like my progress is not enough.
Because I don’t know how to say, “I need more time. I don’t know how much.”
And I feel vulnerable already, as I think many of us do. I don’t have as much energy to take care of myself as I normal would…Much less hear and hold very valid critique of who I am as a person and how it’s destroying my business and ruining my relationships with people and breaking trust and making people feel bad.
My mental health feels a little more fragile than it has in past years. And it’s an uncomfortable place for me to be, because I’m frequently the calm, steady, chill one. My baseline vibe is usually one of peace, not panic.
But I think I know how to step out of the freeze spiral I’m in.
- Accept where I’m at and be in integrity. For me, that means writing it down and making it public, hence this post! But your version of this could be completely different.
- Know my priorities. If I had known I would be pregnant for all of 2023 and be exhausted with being the primary caregiver for my children in 2024, I would not have done two way over promised Kickstarter campaigns back to back in 2022 when it was still a bit more of the Wild West. That was stupid either way, really. And while Kickstarter is for that purpose, the environment has become one where readers want the books to be done first. The truth is that I was trying to use the campaigns to force myself to get more done, and it failed spectacularly. This strategy has worked reasonably for me in the past, but now I’m older and have pregnancy-related health issues I have to deal with and have very little control of my time, seemingly. I can’t be working crazy twenty-something hustle culture hours anymore.
- Find the truth. I can’t give hard deadlines right now. The way I’m working doesn’t work with my former phoenix energy strategies. I understood how to set timelines under these strategies because I had years of data, but I’m currently forging a new productivity path for myself and have very little data. That said, I can give tentative timelines, which are more like intentions.
- Communicate. I can also keep people really up-to-date and possibly even over-communicate. I don’t currently have a great system of communication with my audience anywhere. I find myself ghosting accidentally, even though I actually desire to be present with the group. I’m trying something new where I can post to my website where I can over-communicate without people being bothered by me, and setting up a dedicated email account where I can run more proper announcements, promotions, and sales.
At the end of the day, my priority is my health, then my family, then my career. And that normally works out pretty well, but over the last two years, my health and my children have taken up almost all of my time and energy compared to previously.
So much of this post is surprisingly difficult for me to write, and even harder to change my patterns on. I keep reminding myself:
My past mistakes don’t disqualify me from having a thriving business.
A business is a chance to work on yourself, and all I want to do is get through this hard time in my life and put better systems into place so I can make my business more sustainable and grow it over time.
