Why so serious?
I had a somewhat unusual past week. Which meant that while I wasn’t looking, a whole bunch of deadlines crept up on me.
I must confess that I’ve begun to look forward to the weekly routine of posting to this page. It’s allowed me to get back to doing something that I enjoy. But with enough skin in the game to hold me accountable to those of you who come by here. Like other things in life, it comes with some parts joy and some parts expectation. And even if there aren’t many expectations from any of you just yet, there are a bunch from me. Of myself.
Cue a familiar sense of dread starting to creep in over the last couple of days. I was nowhere close to finding something that was worth your time and attention. I was nowhere close to putting in the effort that I had for last week’s piece that gave me such a sense of satisfaction. I was nowhere close to having something written that I liked as much as I did the last time around.
I made up my mind. I made coffee. I made the bed. I cleared my workspace. (Google “signs of a serial procrastinator”). I finally got to work. I wrestled with ideas of what to post. I dug through my stash of online bookmarks. I jogged my memory for something worthwhile to write about. But nothing stuck.
How was I going to pull this off?
Would I be able to write something at all?
Would it be any good?
Would I be able to do it in time?
Was I letting you all down? Was I letting myself down?
So I did the only healthy thing anyone in a similar situation — with a deadline looming and desperate for inspiration — would do. I got on social media.
And as luck would have it, while I was all caught up in taking myself too damn seriously, along came this post. To remind me, in its serendipitous but tongue-in-cheek way (also, comics, yay), that sometimes I’m enough exactly as I am.
And if I am, you definitely are. Go read the post — nothing I say will top how on the nail it is and how much better it made me feel.
https://www.instagram.com/p/CTq9MjyLYkZ/
Till next time, try not to take yourself too seriously.
But also take yourself kinda seriously. Take yourself just seriously enough so that when you don’t take yourself seriously, people know you’re serious about it. (Credit: @AJRBrothers)
