What a year January has been, huh?

As the year kicks off, I am being hit over the head with a reminder that dang can I blow through my energy way too quickly.

My day job tends to start quickly and be really intense at the start of the year. That means I come home and my brain is a bit like scrambled eggs. It's hard for me to think or create after work.

My energy is consumed with everything I do during the day so that means if I want to get much of anything creative done, anything that requires my brain firing at full capacity then I have to get it done before I head into work.

Thankfully, I'm a pretty solid morning person already so it works for me. Knowing when you naturally have more energy is really important to figuring out those times you can best work.

I know some writers who are, like me, morning people, and I know a lot of writers who are total night owls. They create once everyone else has gone to bed and sleep in as long as possible in the morning. There isn't a one size fits all strategy that guarantees success for you.

On the up side, that means no one can tell you what to do; on the down side that means no one can tell you what to do. It's a pro and a con because choosing your own style can be freeing and amazing but it also involves trial and error over time.

How do you figure out when your energy is at its peak?

Track it.

I know, kind of boring but that's the only way to know. Try tracking your energy for two weeks, two average weeks of your life. Don't do this while you're on vacation or holiday, see what it looks like it during your daily routine.

Rate your energy from a 1-10 every hour. If you're like me, it's high in the morning and then around 2-3 in the afternoon I nose dive into needing a nap land.

See what your energy levels tell you about when you'd be best creating things. Maybe you are super alert at 1 in the afternoon. Is there any way you could take a late lunch at your work and spend some time writing then? Look for ways to fit what your life looks like into what you want to do.

I’m an incredibly anxious person. I over worry about everything. For example, I once panicked about what I was going to wear on a flight to interview for a job in Oregon… BEFORE I had even submitted my job application for the position. I’m always thinking 15 steps ahead, and at least 13 of those steps are worst case scenarios and what could go wrong.

I live with the constant thought that people always hate it when I text or email them because I’m bothering them. I worry that I responded too quickly to a message; I worry that I responded too slowly to a message and that either option means I’m a lost cause and this person will no longer respect or like me. I wake up some mornings with a sense of doom that wraps around my neck like a wool scarf suffocating me in the middle of July.

I stress out about what’s going to happen today, tomorrow, in a month, a year, ten years, twenty years. I panic about the imaginary things I haven’t done yet, and I worry that the things I have done, I’ve done all wrong somehow. I worry that every time I mess up even in the slightest, that I’ve doomed myself forever and should just go shove my head in the ground and hide.

It’s an exhausting way to live, and sometimes it flares up in wickeder than usual ways that leave me ill, depressed, and a general mess who just wants to lock myself in my room so I don’t have to interact with anyone.

Sometimes I can write my way through it, and other times I’m so worried that what I’m writing is awful, and therefore I’m awful that I can barely write a sentence. One of the things I struggle with as a writer is building high enough conflicts because tension worries me (yes even fictional tension) and I just want things to go smoothly which doesn’t make for compelling stories exactly.

I write this not because I want coddling or anything like that (and I worry immensely that’s what this post will be taken as), but because I know it’s a problem, and I’m not going to continue to hide from it, instead I’m working on ways to manage it.

· I run, walk, or just jump in circles in my room.

· I send a message to someone I admire and tell them why they’re amazing.

· I look through a folder of all of the things I have accomplished.

· I keep track of what I do every day, and praise myself for finishing things.

· I do yoga or just lay on the floor and listen to the sounds of a thunderstorm.

Sometimes these work, some days it’s like trying to run from a swarm of killer bees that I can already feel digging into my skin. No day is perfect, and I’ve come to accept that and to try to not (hahahaha) worry about it.

I know I spend most of my time on this blog talking about writing, but this is a part of my writing (and every day life) that I don’t mention much, and I feel like it’s time to own it. Writing on some days is like trying to wade through a locust swarm in my gut that’s constantly trying to devour me from the inside out. But the things I want to write help me make it through the storm and to the other side where I can see the non-bug-infested light again.

I wish there were some piece of advice, some great tip from a self-help book that I could pass along, but the truth is, I just sort of throw a dart towards where I want to go and blindly push forward through locust swarms and all. Some days I lay down and let the bugs crawl all over me, and some days I walk through beautiful sunlight. But at the end of the day I try to do the best I can with what I’ve got going on, and to just keep pushing forward. You’re not alone.