Ah, Stress. My dear, old friend that never seems to leave. Much like that one person in your life that doesn’t take the damn hint that you are really ready to be away from them, but just keeps on going and going. You know the one, right? Yeah, you do. You’re thinking about that person or situation right now.
Well, that situation for me as a dual vocational author, meaning I have a full-time job on top of writing, is nearly an everyday occurrence. Finding the time to write or even finding my muse proves difficult on the best of days. You can plan all you want to sit down and right, but life has a funny way of figuring out your plan and taking a baseball bat to it on the 11th hour of your timeline. Trust me. It happens to all of us. Happened to me last week. Still trying to get over the effects of it even with a vacation in the middle of it.
But stress can always be a motivator as in my aforementioned case about last week. Let me set the picture.
You’re an author. *Hi Author!*
You’ve been kicked in the teeth with personnel issues at work, a death in the family, and trying to balance one family event after another.
Your normal on top of it, planner self doesn’t realize that a deadline is much closer than you originally thought it was. Like… 2 days until it’s due closer.
You have that freak out moment.
“How in the hell am I going to do this? I only have one chapter written.”
That is quickly followed by the sense of utter dread and despair.
“You’re such a failure. How could you not realize this? Maybe I should just quit. I’m not cut out for this. ”
Then it hits. The determination to try your best and get those words put onto paper.
You go without sleep.
You load yourself up on so much caffeine that you have no idea how your blood hasn’t turned into one big soda fountain of Coca-Cola.
You work your ever loving ass off until you finally type the magic words.
An entire day ahead of schedule.
While I used to think of stress as a bad thing, last week it worked in my favor. I made my deadline. Something that I thought was impossible, but I did it. Though I have to totally have to admit that stress in my day job wears me out more than I would like and could never be considered a motivational tool. It did motivate me this time. It made my creative juices flow knowing that others depended on me to get my story done.
Is that story perfect? Hell no. It’s not even remotely like I thought it would be, but the finishing touches can be added during the editing. The important thing is that I did what I promised to do, and got the job done. Is this something that I think will happen every time? Hell no. I know that I may not always find success in every deadline I come across, but last week? Yeah, I totally rocked that deadline’s world.
Now, onto to the next one, which I definitely wrote down like a million and one times in my new author planner. Because, well, #stressgoals.
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