I'm losing my way with the embroidery. There, I said it. I've still got all the same great ideas I've always had but i'm finding it hard to put them into action - I sit down to do the work and my mind draws a blank. Suddenly all these invisible and indefinable barriers go up. I need to try really hard to figure out what they are otherwise i'll never move forward.
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I moved into my new place at the start of April and after a month or so of unpacking and settling in, the novelty of feeling invigorated by somewhere new dissipated and normality sunk in. Without an outside workspace to get me up and out the house (before moving house I rented desk space three days a week), i've been spending a lot more time at home, not bothering to brush my hair or change out of lounge clothes or put on a bra, all of which are things I KNOW aren't good for my mental health - and lead me to looking/feeling like a dead fish (thank you @steviebythesea for that one). And without routine or structure I simply wake up each day to the immediate thought "What am I going to do today to move my ideas forward?". Not a bad way to think, that is until you consider it's all I’ve been thinking about.
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When eating breakfast, the depressive part of my brain says "It's already 10.30. Why haven't you started working yet?", despite knowing I need longer in bed than most due to my trouble with insomnia. When I get my laptop out and think about which part of my to-do list to tackle first, the depressive part of my brain thinks "Jeez, you have so much to do. Working out how to use Pinterest for business has been on your list for over a year. What's wrong with you?". When I open my insta scheduling app to plan a couple of posts, the depressive part of my brain goes "Your feed looks rubbish, no wonder more people aren't looking at your page".
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And with all these unhealthy, negative thoughts buzzing around my brain, each one I know to be untrue by the way (in my rational brain), the pressure I put upon myself mounts and mounts and mounts until it breaks. At this point a third, over-aching part of my brain decides it’s had enough and takes over, forcing me into a deep rest (because depressed = deep rest. If you haven’t heard that one before then you can thank me later - your mind is blown, right?) and I can barely function at all. Why does it take my brain shutting down completely before I’m able to see what i’m doing to myself?
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So what can I do? What can we do? I don’t know how I feel about the word relapse but it’s hard not to think i’ve gone backwards in some way considering this is by far the poorest my mental health has been in a year. I’m not annoyed at myself, merely trying to look at the whole thing factually. Over this recent episode it truly felt like i’d forgotten many of the coping mechanisms i’ve picked up over the last few years. I never thought for a second that all my woes had gone for good, but perhaps i’ve grown complacent towards maintaining the state of wellness and continued learning I naturally weaved into my life over the course of 2018. Simple things like breaking a big project down into its smallest parts means that even if you only manage to complete one small task in a day, you’re still THAT much closer to getting it done. A friend reminded me of this tip a week or so ago and I thought “I know this, so at what point did it leave my brain?”
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When it comes to planning instagram posts and “creating content”, something I see as deeply important to my business, I end up looking for something to write rather than allowing an idea to form naturally, because I know that constantly churning out informative/inspiring content is the only way to get noticed and sell your wares online these days. So I berate myself for not being able to spew aspiration all the time, even though I know this is unattainable and that instagram isn’t the be all and end all anyway. I end up posting for posting’s sake, and I hate what I write, and the depressive part of my brain rolls up again with “Call yourself a writer? Why can’t you do this? You can only write when it Comes From The Heart. How wanky. You’re never going to build a successful business like that”.
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I remember a year or so ago I was posting all kinds of From The Heart, Putting A Voice To Mental Illness type stuff all the time because I was in the throng of illness and needed some kind of outlet. I’ve always known my best writing comes during these times of hardship but over the last couple of months it’s started to really bother me that I can’t write to the same standard when i’m ‘well’. Recently i’ve been much more focused on how to use instagram for business, whereas before this would come very much second to having All The Feels and needing to let rip. I was all about using my voice; putting to words what others felt they couldn’t and writing post after post like a form of therapy. I always knew this didn’t exactly make good business sense but I didn’t care because it was my way of doing business and sooner or later I figured if people trusted and valued what I had to say about mental health, the likelihood is they would buy my art therapy kits when I finally started creating and selling them. As it happens they did, and I still believe this is a good ‘sales tactic’, if you want to call it that.
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But I can’t force the kind of posts I used to write. They came from a place of great depression and confusion and recovery and learning. I’ve been in a period of relatively good mental health for the last six to nine months but in that time I feel like I’ve run out of things to talk about online. If I can only produce ‘inspiring content’ when in a bad place, I’m starting to realise how the very nature of my business being so intertwined with my mental health has the very real potential of becoming unhealthy. I hope it goes without saying that I would never want or choose to be in a bad place for anything, least of all intentionally in order to make money from it.
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So what do I do? Well, I think it’s important I take a step back. Stop thinking about all of this so damn much. Overthinking doesn’t breed creativity and ideas, it stifles them. If my ideas and business can only grow organically when i’m true to myself and what I post then I need to stop forcing it. Life is what happens when you’re making other plans or whatever it is they say. I think, given recent events, it’s important I focus on my health and wellbeing day-to-day rather than my business, and the business side will (hopefully) come out of that organically, as it did before. I.e. i’ll create new kits because it helps me to do so as well as knowing they’ll help other people, rather than forcing them for the sake of making sales. It’s not exactly a fool-proof business model but it’s probably the one I should focus on for now. And if it means making less money this way, well i’ll just have to find other ways of making money, won’t I.