![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Jun. 23rd, 2021 07:15 am
On forgiving your own limits
So yesterday I woke up and decided, after a long week of thinking about it and weighing the pros and cons, to drop out of a Big Bang I was participating in. It's for one of my favorite fandoms, and I was writing about my most beloved OTP... and yet I couldn't bring myself to sit down and write, and the few times I managed, nothing that came out was something I was satisfied with.
Putting aside the important matter of ADHD and executive dysfunction for now, it took me some time and a good talk with some friends to realize that, only two months ago I wrote a whole 56k fic for another Big Bang in another fandom, and all those words were mostly written in a month, and I'm absolutely suffering from creative exhaustion. And still, it took me getting closer and closer to the deadline, and having my BB team asking for updates, and me spiraling down into anxiety, to realize that the problem is not that I'm lazy or incompetent; no, the problem is that, amidst a pandemic that's been going on for almost a year and a half, and after writing a shit ton of words in a small amount of time (I basically won NaNoWriMo, lol) I was obviously exhausted, both physical and mentally.
It speaks a lot to the unrealistic expectations we place on ourselves, that we need to almost burnout (or in some cases actually burnout for real) to realize that you need to dial back.
It hasn't been easy, dealing with the unwarranted guilt, the feeling that I've disappointed my BB team and the mods and myself. Thankfully they've been nice and understanding, and yet I feel like I failed. But I know I made the right decision because, despite feeling sad about the situation, I'm mostly relieved that I won't have to deal with all the negative feelings that the BB was giving me.
I still want to write my fic, and now I can do that without a deadline breathing down my neck (which is something I usually enjoy, but apparently only when my battery is at least at 75%)
Oof, feels good to get this off my chest. Not wanting to disappoint people is something I've been slowly learning how to deal with, especially since fandom is supposed to be fun in the first place, and sometimes we simply expect very unrealistic things of ourselves.
Putting aside the important matter of ADHD and executive dysfunction for now, it took me some time and a good talk with some friends to realize that, only two months ago I wrote a whole 56k fic for another Big Bang in another fandom, and all those words were mostly written in a month, and I'm absolutely suffering from creative exhaustion. And still, it took me getting closer and closer to the deadline, and having my BB team asking for updates, and me spiraling down into anxiety, to realize that the problem is not that I'm lazy or incompetent; no, the problem is that, amidst a pandemic that's been going on for almost a year and a half, and after writing a shit ton of words in a small amount of time (I basically won NaNoWriMo, lol) I was obviously exhausted, both physical and mentally.
It speaks a lot to the unrealistic expectations we place on ourselves, that we need to almost burnout (or in some cases actually burnout for real) to realize that you need to dial back.
It hasn't been easy, dealing with the unwarranted guilt, the feeling that I've disappointed my BB team and the mods and myself. Thankfully they've been nice and understanding, and yet I feel like I failed. But I know I made the right decision because, despite feeling sad about the situation, I'm mostly relieved that I won't have to deal with all the negative feelings that the BB was giving me.
I still want to write my fic, and now I can do that without a deadline breathing down my neck (which is something I usually enjoy, but apparently only when my battery is at least at 75%)
Oof, feels good to get this off my chest. Not wanting to disappoint people is something I've been slowly learning how to deal with, especially since fandom is supposed to be fun in the first place, and sometimes we simply expect very unrealistic things of ourselves.
