Month-old journaling bits, day-old responses

I want to write, so badly, that I can’t. This is not a new feeling. I keep opening word documents, blank blog posts. I know I just need momentum. I know once I get going, I’ll go. But that blank page – it puts pressure on me, to write something extraordinary. And the more pressure, and the more want, the less I can do it. I go back and forth between “I have so much to say” and “I have nothing to say”. I have thoughts, snippits, of ideas of topics – but when I allow them to settle into my fingers, I get all blocked up. Every idea and thought I have sounds stupid.

Just write, just let the words pour out of your fingers. There is no expectation, there is no requirement. You write for you, and therefore, whatever you say is just fine.

Sometimes I wish I wrote fiction.

You could. You could write fiction. Just like you could write poetry. There are no standards, just the ones you fear exist.

I wanted to write about the “too much” vs. “not enough” thing. I don’t really know how to explain it, though, only just feel it. With someone people I worry I’m too much. Too needy, too anxious, too dependent, too self-centered. With others, I worry I’m not enough. Not caring enough, I don’t check in enough, not funny enough, not supportive enough. I’m not good enough in general. And all of that results in a lot of spinny thoughts, ruminations, anxieties. I wonder what it would be like to just…be. I wonder why I automatically jump to the conclusions and fears of being simultaneously too much and not enough – and I wonder, does anyone else do that? Is it yet another “Jen thing” or can anyone else relate? What is it like to just be and do without a constant analysis of real and perceived events and outcomes?

Remember that you certainly do not always feel this way. It’s been a theme in your life, but it is not a constant of a day to day. Remember how many interactions and moments you have now that you don’t analyze or question, and you felt this way in this moment when you wrote this, but you don’t feel this way all of the time. You are very good at just being. You’ve come so far. Remember that your analytical, anxious, obsessive brain will always have a tendency toward this, but it no longer consumes you. Remember that presence of thoughts matters far less than reactions to those thoughts.