Writing On and Through Resistance - Part 2 - Day 6

Tonight the words I would use to describe my current (both presently as it is my experience and as an energetic wave) attitude toward this writing process are:

• blocked
• unenthusiastic
• cliche
• fraudulent 

Resistance Pattern:

I notice a pattern emerging wherein I go through my morning intermittently identifying topics I could write about in the evening. I then go through my afternoon not caring as much about identifying a topic and figuring that I will figure something out. I make a to-do list on my phone. I drive home thinking of what I will do first. Usually I intend to write early on, probably after taking my dog out and eating something. But I have a strong long-standing habit of eating while I watch something, so I often get distracted there. Other items on my to-do list, including writing, are neglected in favor of zoning out and/or engaging in a fiction, or other meaningless fruitless tasks. 

Eventually I try to write. And tonight, as I write, and as I see myself typing words that might actually lead somewhere (where am I trying to identify my words as leading? what is my preconceived destination? how am I judging my words? how is this judgment contributing to my resistance? where is this judgment coming from?), I feel an impulse to get up and go take care of something else I've been needing to do. Tonight it is that I feel an impulse to get up and wash my face. Get my face clean, get that out of the way, then I'll be able to focus. 

I justify this impulse as an opportunity to step away from what I have just written, which contains its own current of momentum, which perhaps I find the experience of to be a little jarring, like it's scary to get out what's inside: it's a little scary to open up and let it out honestly. So maybe this is where the impulse to get up comes from just as my momentum is picking up. Like, okay, there's my topic! Now let's delay some more before actually writing on it. So I justify this as an opportunity to step away and "clear my head" while engaging in some other activity, at this stage most often some kind of bodily cleansing activity (at earlier stages before identifying a topic, delay and impulses are frequently more in the realm of consumption: food, media, but not limited to that). 

So momentum picks up and I want to clean myself. At least, that's the pattern so far. This opening up of what's inside perhaps holds a correlative experience to me of being presentable physically. I am about to open up and maybe I don't want what's in there to be seen. Maybe I don't want to show it. Maybe it's not clean. 

Or maybe it's just plain old delay. Maybe I am giving this impulse too much power and meaning. Maybe my face just feels oily and I'm over it. 

The point then is to stop and breathe. And there I notice the anxiety that is strangling my mid-section. The effort involved in taking a full deep slow breath. But I persist, and in persistence of breath I resist the impulse to get up or to click on another tab or in some other way distract myself from what is in front of me. And then I keep writing. And then suddenly I have something written, this time a somewhat specific breakdown of my resistance. Kinda cool. 

Living Words:

Coming back to the words at the start of this post, the identification of which is a strategy I've gleaned from early lessons in DIP Lite of identifying emotions and feelings:

How am I presently living "blocked"?

• I feel blocked because even though there are topics about which I know I could write, I feel limited to some kind of rule about only writing on experiences from my day. This is self-imposed. 
• I also feel blocked because in my consumption of desteni articles and blogs, I find that I relate to much of what I read but am not sure yet how to integrate it within myself and articulate it in my own writing and am more in a stage of marination. I think it is okay and smart to marinate, but it does not mean I have to feel blocked. 
• I also feel blocked physically. The anxiety in my mid-section is a choking feeling; the racing of my heart is as if my blood flow is blocked. 

How am I presently living "unenthusiastic"?

• I feel unenthusiastic because within my resistance I become tired and then apathetic. 
• I feel unenthusiastic because my high energy from the momentum of previous posts has waned. 
• I feel unenthusiastic because without that high energy and without lots of page views or comments or +1s or feedback, I am failing to see the benefit, "what's in it for me," when I write. When really all that's in my writing is in it for me. It's for me. 

How am I presently living "cliche"?

• I feel cliche because writing self forgiveness is monotonous. The thought has even crossed my mind to copy "I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to" to my clipboard so I can just paste it before each line. I do not do this though because in actually typing those words out I am bringing them to life. Nonetheless, it is monotonous and can feel cliche. Really though I think the feeling of cliche is closely tied to the next:

How am I presently living "fraudulent"? 

• I feel fraudulent because here I am participating in an organized systematic form of writing alongside people who have been doing so for 100s of more days than I have, and in a way I feel like I am in too deep or over my head. 
• I feel fraudulent because I know that as I take in desteni articles or other blogs, I begin to feel intimidated by their clarity and focus or their topic depth, and within that intimidation I want to emulate what I read within my own writing, which would be false and not true to wherever I am within my process. Right now I am walking through resistance, not how to practically save the world. 
• I feel fraudulent because I have sort of halfway kinda made a commitment to write every day, but I don't know that I ever really MADE that commitment so much as just decided that it was important and started slapping Day counts in my titles. I have been trying this desteni thing out, and trying it out each day, and then the next. But I don't know for sure what I will do tomorrow, and so I feel fraudulent for implying a commitment to desteni and to blogging through my desire to show up on here every day and write. 
• What is standing in the way of that commitment? What's going on with that desire? 
• I feel fraudulent because I feel contrived. I like to make pretty strings of words. Sometimes the words I write evoke more feelings in me than they do to describe them. I am trying to keep it honest, but sometimes it is tempting to get creative. 

Self Forgiveness:

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing a pattern of resistance to emerge within me and my energy. 

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to justify some of my distractions or ways of zoning out as necessary to "recharge" or deserved because I worked 8 hours today. 

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to not have a firm grasp on how to best schedule my time within my current work schedule so that I often look at the clock and wonder where the time went. 

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to live the word "blocked." I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to limit my writing in any way. Likewise I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to limit my ability to write in any way. I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to self-impose both external and internal limitations to my writing, creating a state of paralysis. 

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to energetically feel "blocked" in my body, in my joints, in my stomach, in my chest and accepting and allowing this as a reason to resist writing. 

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to live the word "unenthusiastic." I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to become tired and apathetic when faced with resistance. I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to first obtain a high level of energy and then to react to the drop of that energy with a drop in enthusiasm or determination. 

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to identify the end-goal of my writing as anything other than self-intimacy and self-growth. 

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to check my page-views and to feel disappointed when I don't have any. I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to expect support from strangers and friends alike when I know that the reason I am here is to develop self-support. I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to believe that what I write is great and warrants lots of page views and +1s and attention and glory. I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to crave this praise, attention, and glory. 

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to live the word "cliche." I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to see this process as monotonous and boring within and through my resistance. I know it is neither monotonous or boring within and through my experience of it. 

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to live the word "fraudulent." I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to try to adhere to a standard and system of writing that I don't yet completely understand. 

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to want to emulate the content of other blogs, especially when I am on day 6 and they are on day 3xx. 

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to compare myself in opposition to and as separate from anyone, setting up a void between us to be filled with competition within my self-interested need for survival. 

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to pressure myself to have new ideas about and answers to the problems in the world. I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to not start with the problems within myself. 

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to sometimes think, "well, what if there's nothing I need to forgive myself for today?" Haha! 

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to play-act the role of a destonian when I am not sure if I am committed to desteni and whatever commitment I have struggles against even the test of my own wavering stance. 

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to dive into something without being clear in my commitment. It reminds me of the last time I went swimming, in my friend's pool. I jumped right into the cold water, water so cold it literally took my breath away. 

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to be attracted to pretty strings of words and to feel positively about my ability to create pretty strings of words. I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to create pretty, dramatic strings of words especially throughout all of my previous years of journaling, wherein the pretty strings of words were a way to feed my need for attention and validation and also served as a fuel to build up dramatic emotions within me. I forgive myself for accepting and allowing this propensity toward pretty strings of words to persist even within this writing process.