What Do You Do, Even When You Don’t Feel Like It?
This is your writing prompt for today
I’ve been feeling uninspired lately. When I first started writing every day (less than a year ago, although it feels like it’s been forever), I did a lot of freewriting. I wrote by hand in a notebook for fifteen minutes every morning — I called them my morning pages, as described by Julia Cameron in her best-selling book The Artist’s Way. I wrote morning pages every day from February 24 to April 1.
In April, I started writing a poem every day in honor of National Poetry Writing Month (NaPoWriMo). Gradually, the morning pages fell by the wayside.
Now, I write a story for this platform every day, but sometimes, I wish I could go back to the simplicity of morning pages. There was no pressure. No one was ever going to read what I wrote. I simply wrote what came into my head.
Today, I absolutely did not feel like writing — but I determined to do it anyway. Seeking inspiration, I dug out my 300 Writing Prompts journal. I flipped it open, and the first prompt I read was the title of this post: What do you do, even when you don’t feel like it? I chuckled to myself. “This,” I muttered, and started writing this post.
My coffee cup is empty. To refill it, I will have to move Ebenezer, my cat, who sits on my lap every morning while I write. He has earned my lap as his morning territory through a long battle with the Muffin Man, who held it as his territory for the last couple of years. Ebenezer didn’t fight the Muffin Man for my lap. He just crowded him off — Ebenezer weighs sixteen pounds; the Muffin Man weighs about eight pounds.
This is my favorite time of day. It’s 5:14 a.m. I’ve been awake since 4:27, when Sweet Zombie started patting my face and kneading the blanket right next to my head. “You’re not my alarm clock,” I told him, checking the time, “although you are pretty accurate.” My alarm went off three minutes later.
I love writing in the morning, before the sun rises. Once the sun rises, my thoughts turn to work and chores and responsibilities. Taxes and death. The interminable to-do list. I do this — writing — even when I don’t feel like it because the doing of it brings inspiration. All I have to do is get started, and eventually, the inspiration will come. Sometimes, a writing prompt is all that’s needed.
If you’re reading this, consider this post your writing assignment for the day. What do you force yourself to do whether you feel like it or not? I write whether I feel like it or not, although there are also other answers I could give. I take care of my animals no matter how I feel. The weather man is predicting ice and snow tomorrow — but I’ll still have to go outside and care for the chickens and goats. In fact, if their water freezes, I will go outside every two hours to break through the ice. I go to work and pay my bills, whether I want to or not. But if I don’t count all the things I have to do, then my answer comes back to writing. I don’t have to write — but I do it every day, whether I feel like it or not.
What about you? What’s something that isn’t actually required of you, yet you do it every day, no matter how you feel?
