Hi friends,

I’m writing this in one go and not editing it, because getting myself to write a newsletter this week has been very difficult. Apologies for any typos! I didn’t write a newsletter last week, and I very nearly didn’t this week.

For the past few weeks I’ve been recovering from a weird fatigue-and-achiness type of virus. I don’t think it’s Covid, because it doesn’t smell or taste like Covid (like I’ve licked a metal lamp post), if you get me. But who knows, ey.

The illness has left me feeling quite low and last week I was not in the mood to do my usual attention seeking newsletter writing.

No big deal, I thought. I haven’t missed many weeks since starting Wavy Thoughts and let’s face it, not many people will have noticed! However, as I started to feel better this week and considered the prospect of writing… I just couldn’t bring myself to do it, despite wanting to.

Uh oh. As the Simon and Garfunkel classic should go, hello executive dysfunction, my old friend. (Doesn’t quite scan...)

I have been feeling extremely tired. Sleep has not felt like rest, more like clicking a fast forward button. Maybe it wasn’t executive dysfunction, but just sheer exhaustion? But previously, even when chronically zonked, I have managed to pull something together to send out.

This is that something.

I don’t believe in writer’s block, not when I have a list of newsletter topic ideas as long as anything. Nah, what has really been stopping me wasn’t exhaustion.

It was the Fear.

The same fear I get when I go to write my book of essays (still unfinished, poor thing).

The same fear I get when I upload a badly lit photo of my attempts at art.

The same fear I felt when I launched my first poetry zine (hard copies available on Etsy and PDFs on Patreon. I know, what a slick plug. I should do infomercials.)

So I’m facing the Fear the only way I know how, by blathering on at it in the hopes I will bore it to death (what can I say? It’s a superpower.)

I’m typing fast enough to not give myself time to think ‘Wait, don’t publish, it isn’t PERFECT!’

I did end up trying to write something a bit more light and funny yesterday using this method of typing quick to escape the self-doubt - a list of my favourite vocal stims, but it just felt hacky (it was basically a list of my favourite memes, and they’re all from 2016 because I am a dusty dinosaur with spiky hair and glasses who missed their calling to work at Buzzfeed at the height of the listicles boom.)

So instead, here is an angst-filled stream of consciousness. I can’t say it’s not on brand for me.

The Fear has extended to my crappy drawings and art generally. I haven’t made any art this week, which upsets me. It’s easily changeable. I have a desk, albeit extremely cluttered, with a sketchbook on it and pencils. I could literally get up, walk to the next room and draw something. But I can’t.

Actually no, I am going to do something about it. Give me a second I’m going to find my pen and paper.

Took me a few minutes to ‘rev up’, but there we go. It’s crap but it exists. No idea why the Fear is an octopus-like ghost.

The feeling of fear is there, it’s in my stomach, but I’m did it. Drew something. Made something.

It wouldn’t have existed if I hadn’t have tried. Sometimes I try and I fail, because I am human, and an ND human at that. I should give myself some grace. This time I tried and something was created from it. So that’s nice. I feel a bit better now, if slightly scared - the way I tend to feel when I go to send out a newsletter.

You’ll remind me, whether on Substack Notes or in direct replies to this email (which I love receiving btw, they make my day) that this episode will pass and I’ll find my groove again. I know I will too, thinking logically. Of course, it’s hard to block out that ADHD voice that can’t see past the next minute, who can’t conceptualise the future at all and thinks that I will be stuck in this inertia forevermore.

But hey, from this exercise of just going with the little energy I have left, I have made one little cartoon and a few hundred words of content that maybe some of you will enjoy? So that’s something.

I’ll keep resting, being kinder to myself, and I’ll get there. I always do.

Take it easy,

Ren

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