An antidote for the listless or confused
Create something.
No thats not all, but it’s start. A really good start.
There are 2 places in life to be stuck in.
Place 1 is the "stuck IN an endeavour" place. This is where you are in a project - a business, a book, a relationship - and you have hit a wall. Maybe that wall looks like motivation, maybe it looks emotionally hard, maybe it has dollar signs on it. Whatever the reason, it has a definite path out. You just have to find it and start on it.
Place 2 is the "stuck BEFORE an endeavour" place. What to do? This place is is a LOT more confusing than Place 1. You aren't sure which way to turn for fear of failure, fear of standing out, fear of embarrassment, fear…in general. The pain isn't like the localised stabbing pain that happens in Place 1. This pain is an overall ache. I call that ache the "ache of being underused". Its the moment in the waiting room before going to see the doctor, the moment of not knowing whats next and running through all the options in your mind endlessly.
I have often found that the solution to Place 2 lies in inventing a lens for myself, a new way through which I can see the world. A lens has a magic ability to function as a magnet for renewed interest in the things you need to do, the things that matter. A lens can be anything. It can be sitting down to write 3 blog posts on something that interests you, it can be a conversations with a friend about fears, it can be a decision of meditate more and look into what mindfulness means to you. Anything that moves you forward, even a tiny bit, is a good lens.
A lens helps you see. And once you learn to see again, the things you see open the doors to the world of possibility. Where can you take that?
Jeffrey Eugenides said "So when you’re working on something…everything out in the world seems to refer to your story. You constantly find things that metaphorically align with what you’re working on. Slowly, as you write the book, you become aware of these correspondences, and then you make them cohere into a pattern."
The trick is, you can't find the lens. You have to create the lens in the first place. The good news is that the lens can be created, and changed later. It doesn't really matter where you start, as long as you start. Consider what E. L. Doctorow said about writing and use it elsewhere - "It's like driving a car at night. You never see further than your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way."
