I appear to have misplaced my mojo.
I’ve not lost it completely. I mean I know roughly what it looks like, and it can’t be far cos I had it up until recently. I just can’t be bothered looking for it.
I know I know, it’ll be the last place I left it. Thing is, it isn’t. I checked. I looked back a few weeks in my journal and there it is, right where I expected it to be.
Except now, it isn’t.
I can’t think of why it’s disappeared — I’d make a rubbish detective — and don’t think there is anything else going on either. I’m eating reasonably well, I’m not ill and life is, broadly speaking, fine. And it’s not like I don’t have the desire to do things, every day I ponder things I could do, although that, in itself, is starting to become annoying.
I want to write more. I have ideas for this blog. I want to go to the gym. I want to get fitter. I want to cycle more. I have, as usual, various little projects I’d like to spend time on.
Yet, when presented with the opportunity to actually do any of these things, my brain seems to respond with the enthusiasm of a teenager being asked to unload the dishwasher. I circle the idea of the thing I want to do, mumbling appropriate, non-committal sounds, then I just ignore it and go sit down.
And, apparently, this is my current hobby (the sitting down bit, not the teenager attitude bit).
But why?
I suspect some of it is just accumulated tiredness. Work has been busy, life has been busy, dad stuff has been busy, and even the fun things have taken more spoons than normal.
There’s also something I’m recognising about losing my routines. You know how it is, once you stop doing something regularly, restarting it suddenly feels like an entire project in itself.
I mean just going to the gym shouldn’t require a strategic planning session, right?
And yet here we are.
My blog is suffering from the same problem. It’s not that I don’t have anything to write about. Quite the opposite. I have the usual plethora of half-formed ideas wandering around my head at any given moment, many sitting in draft mode —I just checked, over 22k words written but with no where else to go.
Perhaps I’ve been overthinking everything a little too much. I know, me, can you even imagine! Perhaps it’s because my blog has become something I’ve been working on rather than simply somewhere I go to write. I’ve spent plenty of time thinking about the design, the categories, tags, performance, feeds, ideas, archives and all the other assorted nonsense that comes with having a website you’ve been running since 1999.
I’m happier with where it’s at, categories took a while to sort out, and there is still a fix for the mobile view I need to sort out, not to mention the long running ‘can I be bothered moving from WordPress’ thoughts that I’ve written about before.
But the entire point of a blog is that, at some point, you have to actually write something.
Hello.
This is something.
I’m also wondering whether I’m trying to run too many improvement projects simultaneously, I’ve always been a bit boom or bust, everything or nothing. Whilst my 100 dayswent well, I can’t help but want to improve on that, do more, even though logically I know that I should repeat it but that doesn’t feel like ‘enough’? And no, I can’t define ‘enough’ either.
At any given time the following thoughts are banging about in my head: Lose weight. Get fitter. Go to the gym. Cycle more. Write more. Improve my blog. Learn new things. Work on my other projects. Be a better dad. Keep up with work. Remember where I left my headphones. And that’s all before the day today admin and tasks are done.
I guess it’s quite possible that my brain has looked at that list, quietly closed the lid on my mental laptop, and gone for a lie down.
What’s next?
I’m not going to make a grand plan. I am making this statement publicly in the hope I stick to it!
I’m not going to announce a 30-day challenge, I will not create another colour-coded spreadsheet, I will not put all the things I want to do into a list and order it. I will not put deadlines against these things or decide that from Monday (why is it always Monday?) everything will be different.
Because doing all that would probably be exactly the sort of thing that causes my brain to disappear through a side door —the same side door I think I need to find because, perhaps, maybe, behind that door is where my mojo is hiding?
Perhaps I just need to start doing small things again. Remove the pressure, like I did with the 100 day project, and stop worrying about whether I’m doing enough.
Just write something. Go for a walk. Get on the bike. Go to the gym without worrying about whether it’s a “good” workout.
Perhaps I need to (re)learn how to do something because I fancy doing it, rather than because it appears on a list of things I ought to be doing. Keep it simple, stupid.
So, maybe my mojo isn’t actually missing.
Rather, it’s just sitting quietly in the corner waiting for me to stop making such a bloody fuss about finding it. Waiting for me to get out of my own way, to take a breath and realise that the only person putting pressure on me to do all of these things (and more) is me.
Maybe my mojo has just been trying to teach me something: relax, stop turning hobbies into improvement projects, and remember that they’re supposed to be fun. Maybe then the motivation to get up off the sofa will return.
Maybe I should write about all of this whilst it’s in my head. Then I’ll have a nice soft sense of achievement at having written something for my blog.
Ahhh, well done mojo, well done.
What are your thoughts?