How to Avoid Accomplishing Your Goals and Finding Success in About 20 Steps

My first post, thanks for being here and also I'm sorry in advance.

Today on my walk I thought about all the reasons why I don’t actually want to write. I realize this is a bizarre place to start — telling potential readers (yoo-hoo, is anyone out there??) how much I dread the act of writing. How the very idea of it makes me run to other tasks, far more awful and tedious tasks, like calling my health insurance customer service line and once and for all finally getting that ID card sent to the correct home address because that saved photo of my ID number on my phone just will not do and I really think I would be served better, perhaps even healthier, if I had the physical card on my person at all times. I’ve spent hours on hold, sometimes after being disconnected for the hundredth time that day, just to avoid the enormously exhausting and terrifying task of writing. 

As a master procrastinator and great scholar of *Staring Off Into Space or Out Windows* I figured I would dedicate my first Substack post to exactly this, my procrastination habits which, I believe, can serve anyone. These methods of avoidance do not have to just be used for writers — fear not! Think of this as a How To Guide for all of those life tasks you’d love to avoid because the existential dread of actually putting yourself out there somehow outweighs the possible rewards of giving yourself a real, fighting chance to go after something that scares you. 

With that, I present to you…

How to Avoid Accomplishing Your Goals and Finding Success in About 20 Steps:

If you are anything like me, perhaps you have already completed your menial, often bureaucratic tasks. Perhaps your passport is about to expire and you want to be sure that if you ever left the country you could. Or maybe it’s some package that’s gone missing in the package universe that you need to sort. Regardless, after all those phone calls are made, I’d turn to your personal to-dos. 

1. Make bed or change sheets (even if the sheets have recently been changed, it’s always good to change them again because everyone is more successful with a clean bed).

2. Fold laundry or consider if you should do laundry at some point today. 

3. Work out or meditate on the idea of working out. 

4. Hygiene stuff — shower, floss (I personally find great joy in flossing in the shower), shave parts of your body you want shaved, brush teeth, tone and moisturize and don’t forget that SPF!!, style things that could be styled, dress for whatever success looks like to you.

5. Just when you think you could be ready to start something big, say writing that poem you’ve been thinking about, consider how much more poetic you would be if you had a cup of tea. 

6. Go make yourself a cup of tea. If it were up to me, I’d fill a real kettle and stick it on the stove and wait for that high-pitched whistle to alert me that my water is ready. Unfortunately, my yellow tea kettle is in storage, so I’m stuck with one of those phony electric kettles that boils almost twice as fast and doesn’t even offer me that quaint whistling sound. If you are like me and would like to wait a little bit longer for your tea to boil, try filling your electric tea kettle to the very top. I swear it works every time. 

7. If you now have tea in hand and are feeling compelled to head to your desk and open up that blank document — Pause. Notice how your hands feel against the warmth of the mug. Look down at your hands. Are they, perhaps, dry? If so, go find the most lubricating lotion you have in your bathroom and slather those digits with some good nutrients. You can’t be expected to type beautiful prose or whatever it is you’d like to do and look down at your powerful hands and feel inspired if they are ashy. Lesbereal.

8. You’re probably sitting at this point in the process with hands overly moisturized. Good. Now notice your posture. Do you have a good pillow behind you that can support a strong, straight back? If not, go find that pillow. Fluff - fluff - fluff! You can’t be a slouching writer or whatever it is that you are! You must have perfect posture so that if someone does happen to walk in on you as you write your novel (or whatever) they will know you actually enjoy what you do, have made a legitimate career out of your art, and that you aren’t miserable in the choices you’ve made that have eventually brought you here: hunched over pretending to write down something prophetic. 

9. BTW — Is your tea now cooling down? Great, take some sips!

10. Now that your posture is fixed, let’s begin getting down to the business of journaling. Everyone knows that the most successful humans have to journal before they actually start churning out their artistic work. By journal I mean go get yourself that notebook that you used to write down your “ideas” (it likely hasn’t been touched in some time, let’s not let that hinder you) and with an actual pen and your actual handwrite down all of the things that scare you. Just let it out. Get the demons on the page, the real page, not the virtual page, and let them exist on that paper and vacantly stare at you. If you try to do this journal exercise on your computer, you’re already writing and, of course, you’re not actually ready to start creating, you’re only ready to start journaling. One must cough up all of the crap first in longhand before they enter the stage of a blank Word Doc. 

11. At this point, you’re probably spent. Napping is a really important part of the creative process. It’s where our ideas begin to boil and steam and steep and so on… Maybe you still haven’t even touched your keyboard. That’s okay! Don’t fret. Whatever stage you happen to feel that incredible spell of drowsiness come over you, you must listen to that call for sleep and immediately close your computer, take off your reading glasses, and crawl into a ball on your couch. NOT your bed. I repeat, do not go to your bed. This is very important. A creative nap must happen only on a couch and sometimes on rare occasions at one’s desk. If someone catches you sleeping at 3 pm in your bed then you for sure will prove to them once and for all that you are not really a creative but in fact the laziest person alive. 

12. When you wake from your creative snooze you’re going to need a little nibble to amp you up again. Snacks, snacks, snacks, snacks! I can’t stress this enough — snacks are ESSENTIAL to keeping your brain particles buzzing about, which is what you need in that noggin’ in order for creativity to strike. Snacks! Preferably something far too salty or far too sugary. Either way, you will likely need a jug of water to wash down the shame you may feel after pounding a few handfuls of Cheez-Its or Haribo Happy Cherries. In which case, when you get up to grab said snack, also grab a mason jar of water, like one of those very big mason jars meant to hold sauces in the freezer, not one that holds preserves and jams. You’re going to need more agua than that. 

13. Have you checked on the temperature of your tea? While you’re up getting those yummy nibbles, microwave your tea for a solid 90 seconds. That should do the trick.

14. Don’t forget that existential dread is part of the creative process. Lean into it. Don’t fight it, look at it right in the eye and say: “Hey! I welcome you, and I invite you into my heart and soul to guide me to my better place.” Therapists across New York City have been prescribing this kind of treatment for years. It’s the feeling and noticing treatment — let everything be felt and noticed, my friend. When those feelings come, which of course they will because you are trying to do something great with your life, go back to your journal. The Paper and Pen journal, not the one on that computer screen because then you would be writing, and we’re not ready for that commitment just yet. 

15. Now close your eyes and take some deep, soothing, healing breaths. Inhale for one, two, three, four, five….. keep inhaling. Ok now exhale for six, five, four, three, two, one, HOLD THE OUT BREATH, DO NOT INHALE ANYMORE, IT IS NECESSARY TO FEEL THE EMPTINESS OF BREATH IN YOUR BODY SO THAT THOSE BRAINWAVES KEEP SHORT CIRCUITING AND HOPEFULLY FIND SOME MUSE IN ALL OF THE EMPTINESS AND EXISTENTIAL DREAD HAPPENING IN THERE. 

16. Phew. Okay, let’s Facetime. Facetime literally every person you know and check in on how they are doing. They need to hear from a friend and you are exactly that friend today because look at you! You’ve got all the time in the world to chat. Call your mom, call your in-laws, if you don’t have in-laws, call your sister’s in-laws. Call that cousin you’ve been meaning to catch up with, heck, try your ex! Why not? Now is the time for closure and there’s no point in waiting any longer. Closure = success and success = joy and joy = happiness. Trust me, the math maths.  

17. If you are feeling extra anxious today it could have something to do with the sun or the moon. One of those balls up there. Check if mercury is in retrograde. If it is, I would stop everything right now and consider picking this all up tomorrow starting with Task #1 and working your way down the list. When planets are in retrograde or in Libra or whatever it is they do I personally find that there’s too much kinetic energy circling about to actually work so I’m better off taking a step back from it all. 

18. Oh, look! Someone’s calling you back! Pick up, pick up!!!

19. Side note: have you checked your laundry? It’s probably been piling up and needs your attention. There is NOTHING worse than trying to write down some good prose when you know that your laundry has been just sitting there, rancid, in the very room that you sleep in and, of course, at some point, create in. It’s appalling, really. So go get some steps in after that long Facetime call with your ex and get your blood flowing by throwing your delicates into a cool and mellow 45-minute cycle. 

20. Are you still with me? You still want to sit down and create or something, right? Well, I think we’re getting closer. The last thing you need to do is check the mail. You’re an adult after all and adults check the mail on occasion and sometimes even pay bills early. Why not start that habit now? 

21. I promised that I’d deliver a How to Avoid Accomplishing Your Goals and Finding Success in About 20 Steps — so I think I have to leave you here. At this point, I’ve helped you exhaust most of your options, not all, but a handful of them. You’ve meditated, you’ve snacked, you’ve socialized and perhaps even gotten back together with your ex, you’ve done some deep breathing, you hydrated in between it all with both water and tea, and you even got some adulting done. The last thing you need to do here is sit your ass in that chair. I mean it this time. Fluff the pillow one more time, check the water level in your mason jar, and stare at that blank Word doc blinking in front of you. It’s a lot of white, I know. But soon it will be covered with some black doo-dads and likely some red squiggly lines here and there. And it’s at that point when you just start moving those moisturized digits that you’ll be writing. Even if it’s crap, it actually doesn’t matter. Or at least that’s what I keep telling myself…

I guess…welcome to my Substack! Sometimes, like today, I’ll share sound and sage advice while other times I’ll tell you about my walk and how all the men requested I smile as I passed them on the street and how that made me feel, likely exhausted. Sometimes I’ll rant because my subscribers as of now are my loved ones, thus I am allowed to rant. Maybe I’ll talk about food because I really do love food and snacks and food-related things. Most of all, I’ll try to just keep writing because that is really all I’m here to do.  

I bet at this point you’re like, WOW! I need to share this post with everyone I know… so here is a button to do just that, you’re welcome and also thank you…

Remember: Ass. In. Chair. And Go forth.

PS — I cannot be held accountable for any typos as I am Dyslexic, my brain does not see them.  

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