Let's Talk About Pressure

Indulge me for a moment whilst I come out of my semi-hiatus from blogging...

In this world where we are constantly driving ourselves to succeed, to be involved, to do this, to do that, we put a tremendous amount of pressure upon ourselves.

We feel pressured to lose weight, to be healthy, to work out every day, to eat right. We feel pressured to volunteer at our kids' school or our church or our charity group or our writing group. We feel pressured to be the best friend, the best daughter or son, the best husband or wife, the best mom or dad, the best sister or brother, the best employee. In terms of writing, we feel pressured to meet our deadlines (self-imposed or publisher-imposed) or write a break-out novel, or come up with a unique character, or write 1,000 words a day or write to satisfy the market, or blog on a daily basis or visit blogs and comment every day.

Just looking at that list overwhelms me. I have the urge to crawl into bed and pull the covers over myself in a vain attempt to hide from the world and all that pressure. Are you feeling it,
too?

*deep breath*

There is nothing wrong with wanting to be or do any of these things. Who doesn't want to be a better mother or father or be healthy? Many of us believe that we need to do these things to be happy, to find contentment. And this is true in many ways. But it's the pressure to be perfect that throws a monkey wrench into the works.

I highly doubt I'm ever going to be a size 7 again. It would be nice, but my body has changed since I was in college - for one, I had a child. And two, well, metabolism changes as you age. But instead of looking at my attempts to lose weight and eat right as a quest to be the perfect size 7, I've had to perceive it differently. Instead of "needing" to lose the weight, I "want" to lose the weight because it will result in a healthier me. Have I lost track of this vision? Sometimes, especially when I'm at the mall and see all these perfect size 6s and 7s walking around!

But the pressure valve can be released on many of these situations if we simply change our perception. If, instead of saying, "I need to be a perfect mother/father", we say, "I want to be a better mother/father," that takes some of the pressure off.

Look, perfection in this world ain't gonna happen (forgive my lapse in proper grammar). So why do we keep wearing ourselves out trying to find it? Why do we continue to put more and more pressure on ourselves to achieve something we'll never have? I'm never going to be a perfect size 7, never going to write a perfect novel, never going to be a perfect mother or daughter. What I can do is be a better writer, a better mother or daughter, and heck, a healthier size --whatever--.

I think this whole bit of "hunkering down" I've been doing lately has shown me some truths. I think too much, for one, and I am putting way too much pressure on myself with my writing. I need to back off. I need to write just to write. I need to isolate myself from the publishing and marketing news and just focus on the story. This also means perhaps backing off on writer-related posts on the blog. I feel a foolish superstition that if I let anyone know about the project I'm currently working on, the motivation and love I feel toward it will melt away. So I'm keeping my yap shut. This may be hard for me, but at this point, I feel like it's the right thing to do.

And it has eased the pressure.

Have you felt under pressure from too many things in your life lately? Has it affected your writing?