Jack had it pretty good. He traded one dried up cow for a handful of magic beans, and from the beans sprouted a giant beanstalk that lead to riches and a life of leisure. I didn’t ever think of Jack as a “role model” when I was a kid, but in retrospect, I’ve been trying to grow a giant beanstalk of my own for quite some time.
When I get in my worst moods—the ones where I don’t think I could write even if someone really did have a gun to my head; where it feels impossible to write anything, be it a blog post or a text message; where my brain “just doesn’t work”—when I get in those moods, I wholeheartedly believe that there is a Magic Something that will solve the problem. Something that, if done, if watched, if read, if ingested, will fix everything wrong and get me right back to where I was before I inexplicably dove off a cliff.
That something does not exist, and as I chase it, I run away from the thing that I need to do, and fall ever further down the rabbit hole of anxiety and missed deadlines. Far and away, my toughest writing challenge is climbing back out of that hole. The entire time I’m climbing, the me that was writing well the day, the week, the month before, is taunting me. I think I’m making progress, that I’m getting back to being myself, and all the while he’s at the top of the hole yelling “Look around! You’re still at the bottom! You’re going NOWHERE sucker!”
There is nothing that flips the switch to shut off anxiety. I’ve just typed those words. You can see them, right? So on some level, I know them to be true. But man, not once have I been able to stop myself from searching for the Magic Something. It’s not TV. Or coffee. Or food. Or beer. It’s not a motivating interview with a writer, or an article about a tragedy somewhere that makes me realize how small and insignificant my problems are.
In my defense, the search can be misleading. At times, it feels like any one of those things is working. I watch an episode of something, and I calm down. The fire in my head goes out. But the second I try to write something—anything—I’m right back to where I started. Actually, I’m usually a little worse off.
Belief in the Magic Something implies a belief in something even more toxic: the easy road—a path where less effort grants more and better results. And there’s an important reason that that belief is so harmful: If there is an easy road, you should be on it. If there is a better path to travel, then why the hell aren’t you taking it?
I have spent many, many hours hating myself for struggling and having so much difficulty accomplishing the things I want to accomplish. If I can get a hold of that Magic Something, I can finally stop being so angry at myself and get something done. This is the assumption that I operate under.
But none of that is true. And worse yet, it’s incredibly self-destructive. The belief that if you’re having a hard time, it means you’re doing something wrong is the most surefire way I’ve found to go absolutely nowhere at all—aside from utterly insane.
And as fun as the slow descent into madness has been, I think I’m about ready to call off the hunt. As I wean myself off of searching for the Magic Something, my goal is to allow myself to have a hard time. And more than that, to embrace those difficult periods, rather than running in the other direction. Besides, the easy road’s not all it’s cracked up to be.
Even Jack had to outrun a Giant.