Prioritizing And Protecting

As a writer I've never really dealt with writer's block in the way I've seen it described by others.

The trope of the "stuck writer" involves someone who's frustrated and intimidated by the blank page (or the blinking cursor) in front of them. Perhaps they become avoidant. It could be that they turn to various methods of procrastination so they don't have to face the insecurity of finding a vacant lot where they'd expected to see all of the great ideas they'd parked.

For me, it's not that I don't know what to write... it's that, lately, I know people are reading what I've written now. In the very place I carved out to use my voice, I realized I've recently begun to censor myself.

Today is day 162/365 of The MAP Year Project. Since I started trialing and testing things during the pre-launch process, it's actually day 208 of writing this daily column.

My original goal was three-fold:

• improve my communication skills.
• use those skills to repair relationships.
• prioritize and protect my creativity.

In many ways, I already achieved what I'd set out to — I got what I wanted. But this self-censorship evolution hadn't even crossed my mind as a toll I'd have to pay on this leg of the journey.

I should also clarify that when I say "censorship," I don't mean that I've been altering, redacting, or misrepresenting stuff. I haven't. When I write and publish something, I share myself fully. And that's a thing I'm quite proud of. No, it's more that I mean I'm still figuring out where my boundaries are with how much of my personal life I'm willing to share as it connects to others and their personal lives. I've come to realize I'm actually quite comfortable with sharing. Which is pretty cool because I'd always thought I wasn't. The story I'd tell myself was that I was shy and insecure and that I feared the judgement of others. While there's certainly truth in that, I've since been able to identify the throughline between them, thanks to writing.

The connective tissue of the story is that I struggled with taking up space. Mostly that has to do with knowing when and how to do it, but it was also my comfort with doing it at all. Writing gave me a place to exist freely. Now that my brain knows there are people here who could be implicated by my words, I think there are times where I second-guess whether or not to share certain events at all. That's the new story I'm telling myself, anyway.

I'm still working on what to do with this realization, but squaring up and sharing—despite the urge to self-censor—seems to be in service of the ultimate goal of this column: prioritizing and protecting my creativity.

So, that's the path forward I'm encouraging myself to take.

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Our Daily MAP Year Prompt
162/365

When's the last time an unexpected hurdle popped up between you and your goal? How'd you handle it?

If you know someone who'd appreciate this, pass it along. And if something stuck with you while reading, I'd love to know what it was.

onward.

For more on this daily column and The MAP Year Project, read the backstory here.