The Person I Keep Planning For

She Doesn’t Exist

I skipped last week’s issue.

That’s the first one I’ve missed after consistently publishing for eleven weeks in a row. I know that in the grand scheme of things, one missed week is not a catastrophe. But I was genuinely disappointed in myself, because eleven weeks straight was the longest I’d ever kept a newsletter going. I kept telling myself it was the travel, or the timing, or that this particular week just got away from me. And all of that is true, but when I actually sat down and thought about it, I realized the missed issue wasn’t the result of one bad week. Rather, there have been a number of flaws in my system for a while. Last week just happened to be when they made themselves evident all at once.

Editing Before Writing

I don’t actually brain dump. I thought I did. I often sit down with so many thoughts running through my mind, which should make writing easier but in reality makes it harder because the second I start typing, I’m already filtering. Every sentence gets judged while I’m still in the middle of writing it. “This isn’t good enough.” “It could be better.” “It’s missing something.” “There has to be a better way of saying this.” “People reading this probably won’t take it well.” “I hope this doesn’t sound offensive or cringy.” “This doesn’t make sense.”

To be fair, the internal commentary is part of the editing process, but the problem is that I’ve put myself in editing mode before I’ve even given myself a chance to be in full-on writing mode. You can’t trim the fat off the meat when there’s no fat or meat to begin with. So there I am with a head full of ideas and an empty document, and the fuller my head gets, the worse it feels because now I’m experiencing writer’s block despite having so much to say and the only person preventing me from getting all my thoughts out is me.

Working While Traveling

When I plan out the days/weeks that I’m traveling, I see all this time. Four hours at the airport. Twenty in the air. On paper that’s almost an entire workweek sitting right there in my itinerary, and I always tell myself that if I can’t get to my reading or writing or studying at home (in the ideal environment), I’ll just do it while I’m traveling.

Then I actually get there, and I remember. The airport is loud. Announcements are being made constantly, kids are crying, and I’m on alert the entire time because I don’t want to miss any notifications about my flight, so some percentage of my attention is permanently reserved for a gate change that may or may not happen. On the plane, it’s worse. I get headaches on and off because of cabin pressure, tiredness from all the preparation leading up to the trip finally hits me, I can’t afford business class so I’m working on a laptop in a space that wasn’t designed for a laptop, and the seatbelt sign is on for most of the flight, so I’m dealing with back pain and every other kind of pain that comes from not being able to stretch. Eating, drinking, watching a movie, or trying to fall asleep is honestly the ceiling of what I can do in that environment. It has never once been a place where I got real writing done. I just keep planning as if it will be.

In Health and in Sickness

I also plan the days/weeks assuming I’ll stay healthy, and then I get sick, which is extremely frustrating for me because I actually do the prep. The trip I’m currently on is a prime example of this. I know my immune system, so I’ve been taking the necessary vitamins and supplements to keep it boosted. I’ve been getting at least seven hours of sleep every single night, jet lag and all, which I think is pretty good considering everything I’ve had to stay up for. And I got sick anyway!

I’ve been going back and forth on whether that was preventable. The weather has been hot and rainy, and I’ve been bouncing between humid air outside and blasting air conditioning inside every building and vehicle. My instinct is to blame the temperature swings, but the reality is that they’re probably a smaller factor than they feel like. What actually stacked the odds against me was the travel package as a whole: dry cabin air that dries out your nose and throat, a packed terminal full of people from everywhere, and a body running on shifted sleep. So, do I just need to plan on getting sick every time? Not exactly, but traveling does raise the odds. A solid routine lowers them, but it doesn’t get me to zero, and I’ve been building my calendar as if it does.

Landing the Plane

So, those are the flaws in my system, and it took missing a week of publishing to identify them. In all three cases, I’m planning around a version of myself who doesn’t exist. That version writes clean on the first pass. She gets eight hundred good words done at gate C14. She takes her vitamins and stays healthy. I keep handing my schedule to that person, and then I’m surprised when the real me shows up instead.

Here’s what I want to try doing differently moving forward. I’m physically separating the brain dumps and the drafts into two different files, and no backspacing is allowed during the brain dumping stage. I’m only reserving travel time for the activities that can survive a bad environment, which for me includes leisurely reading a book, listing bite-sized content ideas that spontaneously come to me (shower thoughts, if you will) in my notes app, or speaking a rough idea into a voice memo at the gate. And when I’m drafting my newsletter content, I want to have at least one extra issue banked. That way, there’s a buffer for when I inevitably hit bumps on the road and the schedule I built doesn’t go according to plan.

I’m writing this issue sick, which is not how I wanted to come back. But knowing my perfectionistic all-or-nothing personality, skipping more than one week will make me want to give up altogether because I’ll trick myself into thinking that I will always be inconsistent, so I might as well stop trying. I don’t want to fall into that trap, so I’m doing everything in my power to prevent myself from ending up in a situation where it’s easy to feel that way. Growth is the goal, and while the process has its ups and downs, I have to believe that it’ll all be worth it.