Unfocused

I had been feeling quite unfocused in my writing. I have completed my Masters in creative writing and felt myself a bit addrift. I have found that I have hundreds, or better, many hundreds of ideas for writing, they are from ideas for blog entries, short stories, and books, I even have full books delineated. Ideas I had forgotten about and only found now that I decided to organise my “ideas for writing”. I am putting them down into Scrivener, separating them in types and into appropriated project folders.

For a couple of months I was simply without focus and that left me completely unsettled. Whenever I sat down for writing I didn’t know what to write and always felt I should be working on something else.

Then I saw this TED talk about the science of happiness and understood that until you make a decision about something — or until you are given no other choice by circumstances — it is difficult for the brain to create happiness about anything. That explained why I felt it was so difficult writing about one thing alone.

That is when I realised that if I decided anything, anything at all, it would be all right. I put down a list of all the projects I could be attacking and the moment I wrote “organise my ideas for writing” I knew this was “the one”.

That one decision took me out of my unproductive phase. I started organising and lost the will to do that. But the drive to write more often in this blog replaced it. Then I felt like re-writing my website taniacreations.com which is quite old now.

I have Brazilian friends who have lived in Australia and were not happy because they missed Brazil, then they went back to Brazil and now they miss Australia and are still feeling dissatisfied. That probably happens because they live inside the eternal possibility of being here or there without making a decision for real.

Making one decision doesn’t mean you will not change your mind. However, if you decide with certainty for something and a new possibility presents itself you might make a new decision, with certainty for a new thing. By doing that you will leave your brain free to create the hormones and sinapses necessary to provide you with happiness. Doubts, indecisiveness, no acceptance, are not conducive to creativity and peace.

My solution to any doubt is: decide anything, as long as it is certain. Even if five minutes later you decide something else.

So now, I feel quite happy… writing away!