69. Creating in Chaos

I listen to a lot of podcasts personally, and something I've noticed is that most of them don't actually talk about the podcast in terms of what's going on behind the scenes, the making of, the real life scheduling and all that.

But on Slow Writing, we do talk about that because from the beginning, this show has always been a real living example of seasonal creative living.

Just about everything I talk about in terms of pacing yourself, looking at your circumstances, figuring out your needs, all of that can be reflected some way in this show.

So I do like to talk about it because I think many of us are used to following through on things, maybe pushing ourselves more than we should because of old habits and old conditioning.

And I like to give permission to myself.

and everyone listening to not do that anymore.

And the most current example is that I naively thought my first episode back from the summer would actually be in mid-August.

And that's what I had put on my calendar back in June.

But as August got underway, I realized that it just wouldn't be possible.

And when I pushed this episode to the end of August, I felt so much better.

I think that's always a good signal to look for.

How do you feel when even hypothetically you give yourself permission to change something? Do you soften and exhale or does it feel constricting? I think that's a great test to see if you're making the right decision and just sort of how it lands in your body.

So I noticed this softening and then I went about my month and then all of a sudden it was the week when this already pushed episode was supposed to come out.

And I thought, nope, I still can't do it.

And you know what was getting me stuck, honestly, was my own system of releasing episodes on the full moon and new moons, which is roughly every two weeks or so.

This cadence feels really good to me, and I started it earlier this year, and it went really well, but I had to remind myself that even though that was the plan I made seven months ago, I'm allowed to change the structure of this very thing that I created.

The first half of the year, it was very easy to stick with that schedule and have that structure.

And for the second half of the year, I think the episodes will just come out when they come out and that will be okay.

And That's exactly why I'm telling you all of this about time and making choices based on your current circumstances.

Of course, the first half of the year felt different than the second, and there was no way that back in February I could have predicted what my energy level would have been, what would have been on my plate at this time.

So it doesn't make sense to force myself to stick with a plan that I made a long time ago.

If I did that, I would have felt a lot more depleted and I would have been overriding some needs.

So I chose to move forward with some modifications.

And that's the kind of engaged decision making we need to be in with ourselves regularly.

And even just this morning, I had put on my calendar, this is the day I'm going to record this episode.