How to take action when you can’t do much at all

On realigning with the person I most want to be

I find I like to begin these blogs (these blogs that feel like letters) with some sense of where I am. I am propped up in bed, my legs particularly useless today, and there is that grey thrumming sound from outside the window; that kind of urban vibration you get on overcast days when the grind and echo of the traffic and the estates and the warehouses gets trapped under the clouds. The cat is a round black void in his bed next to me, no sign of movement. 

It hasn’t been announced by my publishers yet, but I finished a new book at the beginning of the year. It is a wild, enchanting, startling, unique wonder of a book and there is nothing in the world I would rather have written. I’m now in that strange in-between time of waiting on the editing process but also needing to decide on my next step. It involves a lot of thinking. A lot of trying to figure things out. Here’s what I have to tell you today: I am utterly sick of thinking.

I’m done with it – all that round and round, hunting for answers and surety. It isn’t serving me. This is quite the shake-up as it’s what I spend most of my life doing, especially lately, especially when I don’t know what’s next.

Because I have to lay still so often, it’s easy to spend a lot of time thinking. Because I want whatever I do next to be right and good, I think even more, often all the way through the times when doing more is possible. If I find myself up against a wall or a question of any sort – like now – I can spend days or weeks trying to work out the right answer in my head so that I don’t waste my energy on the wrong choice. I assume that if I just keep thinking about something, I’ll eventually know what to do. Thinking is my comfort zone. Thinking might even make me feel anxious and tired sometimes, but it’s also safe and easy to control. Yes: a nice, comforting habit of thinking is the single best way to put off actually doing anything or facing anything. Think about stuff and you can’t fail. Perfect.

While I’ve been trying to figure out my next steps, I’ve also been spending a lot of time thinking (see?) about who I most want to be. Admittedly, this is a useful, aligning exercise, especially before you start writings something new, but what I’ve concluded is that I don’t want to be the kind of person who spends their life sitting around and thinking; I want to be someone who Does Stuff. That’s what the world sees in me now – I have already begun to be that person – and it’s a reputation I want to keep up. Thinking, habitual and safe as it feels, doesn’t actually make me happy. But, oh, doing stuff? You can almost see me unfurling, opening, shining like a dandelion. Moving, acting, changing, doing: it feels so GOOD. And I am good at it. I am made to do stuff. 

When I’m doing, I’m right in my body. I’m right in my beautiful, flawed, painful, clever body and, yes, perhaps this is why thinking is more appealing often because it hurts less there. But although doing might hurt, doing is also sensual, sensory – pleasure only exists there too – and that’s what I want, to be living, sensing, plugged in, experiencing my body and my environment, moving and responding to things I can touch, see, hear, feel. Deep in the world where pleasure is, not stuck in my head.

The problem I face, of course, is that I can’t do very much at all. My wind-up mechanism has a very, very short twist. Sometimes only a few short minutes will pass and that’s it, I’m undone, the battery's empty again. Pain pulls at me like a nagging child, making it hard to sustain any focus. I’m also perpetually unsure. Is this the right choice? The right way?

How can someone who can’t do much and who doesn’t know the right thing to do keep dedicating themselves to a proactive life?

I have decided the answer comes down to four things:

1. To get really good at starting again by practising starting as often as I can

2. That a little bit is always always better than nothing

3. That I will figure stuff out by doing, not thinking

4. That I can redefine ‘activity’ not as busyness but as simply focusing my attention on one thing for as long as I can

I still don’t know what my next book should be, but I know I will figure it out by actually writing something every day, my fingers soft and active on the keys, not sat still thinking about it.

I still don’t know how to make art I want to make with so little energy, but I know I will figure it out by actually making art every day too, paint on my fingers, my body making marks, no matter how imperfect or how far removed it is from what I wish I could create.

I still don’t know how to be healthier, but I know I will figure it out by trying and by actually sticking with healing practises, day in, day out, by showing my body how good it is to be alive and that it can do this, not by waiting for wellness or a mood or a sign or an assurance that I will feel perfectly comfortable or safe.

I know what I want to do. We all do, deep down. I want to write and make art and heal and build a deep, connected relationship with the world around me.

To actually do those things - not just think about them - what I need to get good at is starting again, reaching towards my laptop or my sketchbook or lifting my gaze and my attention to make just a little something happen. WHAT I end up doing doesn’t matter, not really. What matters is that I die as a person who took action, however fallible and small, who didn’t waste their life living in their head. I need to catch myself on those long days when I find myself sat thinking, turning it all over for the hundredth time, and instead move my body gently through its pain and its drama and begin. Again, again, amen.

It took several stops and starts and rests and a long sleep in the middle to write this, and I had to figure it out as I went, but look at that: I got there in the end.  

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