The Measurement of Worth

Jan 11

This past holiday season, I ran smack into my old friend Anxiety. Not being able to travel due to Covid, I had blocked off most of two weeks to a lot of writing, hopefully cranking out one or two articles before tax season took up my time for the next few months. But, as usual, my carefully laid plans didn't pan out — I had an attack of "writer's block."

Writer's block isn't any single phenomenon. For me, it's just another name for anxiety when it keeps me from writing. Despite positive feedback on my recent work (or maybe because of it?), I had trouble choosing my next topic. What will people like? Is this where I want my writing to go? Can I do that subject justice? What do I even know about this topic? Is this too personal? What would so-and-so think?

The momentum I felt from the last couple of articles evaporated, and a lot of my old issues came back at once. I started a couple different topics but hated what I was writing. The words wouldn't come out right. Nothing I'd ever done felt like it was worth writing about. I felt my work needed to be absolute original for it to be worthwhile, so if any successful author had written about a topic I wanted to work on, I dismissed it out of hand.

With each dismissal, my anxiety ramped up. Maybe I'd been working too much and needed a real break, not a working break. I decided to let myself off the hook over Christmas weekend.

Christmas came and went, but my anxiety didn't. I started to feel bad that I couldn't get myself to write when I had the time. I feared I must not be a good enough of writer, because good writers didn't deal with this. If this thing I decided was going to be "my life's work" didn't actually work, what else would I do? The thought paralyzed me. I couldn't even look at my writing desk, let alone sit down at it. So I watched TV instead.

Usually when I get stuck, I have a bag of tools to help me return to my center. I journal about everything that's on my mind. I meditate to calm my anxiety. I talk to my husband and close friends. I try to find things to appreciate about my life instead of focusing on what's not working. I use energy healing techniques I've learned. I made a cheat sheet of practices and insights that have helped me in the past, but half the time I don't remember it existed until later.

This time, the different tools helped for a short while, only for me to return to anxiety a few hours later or wake up with dread the next day. I knew I was being too hard on myself, but I couldn't let it go. Letting myself off the hook felt like a wasted opportunity, even though I knew that was needed sometimes.

I can't tell you exactly how I arrived at the resolution, but it showed up when I was trying to take a nap on New Year's Day. Drifting into sleep, I realized my anxiety revolved around feeling like I had to prove my life was worthwhile, and writing was my way of doing it. Whenever I ran into problems in my writing, I feared I would never be able to prove my worth. So every writing problem carried an existential threat. Then I couldn't face the writing because the anxiety was too much to bear. Around and around it went.

Once I saw the whole picture, I realized I was asking my writing to do the impossible. I put an intangible, imaginative process into a straightjacket of expectations in order to measure up — how could it not be paralyzed? Writing could not prove my worth — neither could any other work. My worth had always been inherent. The idea that we could even measure something as immeasurable as the worth of a life, let alone by something as fleeting as the opinions of others, was a damned lie.

So I let my writing off the hook. Whether my writing was good or bad only ever proved my skill as a writer at that particular point in time, and skills can improve and evolve. It had nothing to do with who I was.

Relief washed over me. The anxiety was gone, and the thought of writing felt good again. It wasn’t the first time I made this realization, but sometimes I forget. I added a new entry to my cheat sheet and hoped I’d remember to read it next time.