#61: I have a name for my enemy.

Reader, I’ve been procrastinating this all day. While I’m admittedly quite a productive procrastinator, there are no more Christmas decorations to hang, no more dishes to clean, no more garbage to take out, and with the baby soundly sleeping, no more little person to chase around the house. It’s just me and this mostly empty document.

When I first started this writing endeavor, I did it with the goal of writing more often and improving my craft. Since that initial declaration, I’ve penned sixty different essays and creative works that all pay homage to humanity’s constant muse: the story. Despite my pride and satisfaction over these posts, I’m starting to notice a little habit set in, and Reader, I don’t like it.

Somewhere along the way I decided to write on Sunday mornings and post later on that day. Sunday always seemed like a great day to do it: the week is coming to an end, and I’m always in a good headspace on weekend mornings. It was the perfect time to write, but, it started to become the only time I’d write. In my quest to write more, I found myself compartmentalizing the process. Sunday would end and so would my time writing, and it would stay that way until late Saturday night when I’d start to think about what the next day’s post was going to be.

As time went on, ideas would come along, big ideas, that were too daunting to complete in an hour or two, so they would get put on the back burner. I was left not writing the things I wanted to write simply because I couldn’t fit them in this little window of time I carved out in my week. And, it became so easy to convince myself not to write for a given week. (Reader, if you’ve ever noticed a few gaps in my posting schedule, it’s largely due to this.)

Recently, I heard author Steven Pressfield on a podcast. Pressfield, both a successful fiction and non-fiction writer, discussed this idea of resistance and how it blocks the creative (and non-creative) process and keeps us, the artist, from doing the work. His insight on this intrigued me, so I quickly purchased his book The War of Art, a cute play on Sun Tzu’s classic, where he fully expands upon this concept.

In his book, Pressfield defines resistance as the following: “Resistance cannot be seen, touched, heard, or smelled. But it can be felt. We experience it as an energy field radiating from a work-in-potential. It's a repelling force. It's negative. Its aim is to shove us away, distract us, prevent us from doing our work.” Pressfield goes into detail about how resistance comes from within each of us, and its aim is to counteract the work or project we want most to complete.

Pressfield says, “Resistance will tell you anything to keep you from doing your work. It will perjure, fabricate, falsify; seduce, bully, cajole…It will assume any form, if that's what it takes to deceive you. It will reason with you like a lawyer or jam a nine-millimeter in your face like a stickup man. Resistance has no conscience. It will pledge anything to get a deal, then double-cross you as soon as your back is turned. If you take Resistance at its word, you deserve everything you get. Resistance is always lying and always full of shit.”

Reader, I’m starting to think that Pressfield’s resistance is what I’m feeling. Resistance is telling me that I don’t need to write this week. It is resistance that’s diverting my attention towards housework. It’s resistance that created this rule of only writing on Sunday. And its resistance that pulls up Wikipedia or Twitter instead of opening Microsoft Word.

Resistance almost won tonight, too. Before typing the first words in this post, I was searching for anything I’d ever written saved in my iCloud, so I wouldn’t have to sit down and do the work. I even thought about reposting #31, which covers a similar subject matter. But I didn’t. I sat down and started to write.

Maybe that’s the answer. Maybe that’s just what I need to do. Drag myself to the page and start writing no matter what. Whether it’s Sunday morning or Wednesday night, just do it.

Thanks to Mr. Pressfield, I have a name for my enemy. Resistance was staved off for tonight, but tomorrow is a new day and our fight continues.

Thanks for reading.