Do you ever feel both inspired and overwhelmed at the same time?
I spent the morning organizing an area that I have not organized for a while. Some files and writings and documents, some of which I haven’t looked at for years.
They’re all unfinished, things that I’ve started and plan to finish one day and set aside and have done nothing with.
Part of me wonders if the better idea is to delete a majority of the old ideas and documents and thoughts and just start over with a clean slate so to speak
Another, part of me, the emotional HSP part, fondly clings to these old ideas and storylines and outlines.
I know I want to do something with these writings, even if I’ve grown out of some of them. I’m not sure how to proceed.
Do I make a writing plan? A publishing plan?
Even if I plan to completely two books a year, one nonfiction and one fiction, it would take me 55 years just to finish the story ideas I currently have.
And if I only wrote one book a year, unless my lifespan happens to be 150 years, I won’t get it done.
Perhaps I’m fooling myself to think I will even finish all these stories at all.
After all, I haven’t yet. What makes me think I will suddenly become organized and motivated and start cranking them out?
And even if I do, there are just so many books and posts and papers out there already. What makes me think anyone will read what I write and publish?
Is that the HSP writer part of me again? Or is every hopeful writer also riddled with fears at the same time?
To write or not to write …
I spent the morning organizing these because I know I need to start and I need to get somewhere with my writing. I made space in my schedule specifically for this …
But instead of writing, I spent it organizing and getting overwhelmed.
I have begun so many writing projects and finished so few.
Lack of time.
Perfectionism.
Fear and anxiety about getting it wrong … and about nobody really caring whether I do this thing called writing or not.
At the same time, strangely, it remains a passion … something I not only love to do but feel somehow bidden to do.
If I somehow decided not to write, I would feel a part of me was gone …
An important part of me …
One of the deepest parts of who I am as a highly sensitive writer.
But upon what do I set my focus?
Writing? Revisions?
At this point, I just don’t know. Maybe it will grow clear now that I created time in my schedule to focus.
Or maybe I just make a more concrete writing schedule and stick to it whether I feel like it or not.
Focus on a particular story and work with it until it’s done.
But regardless of what I choose to write about, specifically and where I choose to take my stories (or where they take me), I am going to keep on writing.
I am a highly sensitive writer and I believe the world needs that. The world needs writings and stories and essays and poetry by people who process the world in a deeper and richer way.
For much of my life, and even now sometimes, I struggle with the thought of being “too sensitive.” I think all of us who are highly sensitive people face this.
But maybe it’s time to use that sensitivity to try to capture and even create beauty through words.
God knows we need more beauty in the world.
The Highly Sensitive Introvert 