For me, creative/intellectual energy tends to come in cycles.

There I’ll be, bounding along, bubbling over with ideas and saying yes to everything (even things that, if I applied the laws of physics, I’d know I probably don’t have time to do).

Then, out of nowhere, comes the crash. That period in which I become bogged down in anxiety and fear, unable to do anything more than mindlessly surf the internet. The more self-sabotaging my behaviour, the more anxious I become, until even the smallest tasks become a Big Freaking Deal. Much easier to dive back into the mindless activity.

Which is why I liked this post. At first I thought it was going to give me advice about stamping out procrastination. Then I realised the real point was that you can never escape procrastination entirely.

As Fabian writes:

Procrastination is part of the loop.

It costs energy and motivation and time. It costs what we call our life.
It costs the life of that girl.

It costs a whole chunk of life – an hour, a day, a week, a month – until she finally gets back to her core.
Back to what she is.
Back to what she wanted to create.
Back to her art.

Because as unbeatably enthralling as creative or intellectual work is, it’s also scary and confronting and draining. And at some point, if you’re anything like me, you’re probably going to crash.

And while you may not be able to avoid the crash entirely, you can control what you do once you’re in it.

You can accept it as the reminder that it is that your brain and body has its limits. And once you’ve given in to those limits - and this is the most important bit - you can climb back out of it again.

How do you deal with “the loop”?

Elsewhere: The Loop (The Friendly Anarchist)