Surviving the soft headed days

Remembering the lifeboat that is planning on days when you aren't feeling so great.

I have what I call “soft headed days”.

These are the days where it feels harder than others to connect with what I want to do.

Usually, soft headed days are defined by:

• Wanting to write or create something but not being sure what that something is

• A drop in confidence in any (and all) of my ideas

• Getting stuck on the flypaper of outcome

• A deeper loss of sense of self as a creative, writer, coach, or freelancer

Soft headed days are triggered by:

• A return to work after a break (or even a weekend)

• Feeling excluded or unwanted or rejected

• Increased sense of isolation (i.e. too much time without other people)

• Feeling my difference too much - whether that’s in approach or identity-wise

• Worrying too much about money

• Attempting to do something that looks good on paper but something I don’t truly care about creating

• Seeing myself in other people’s mockery

• Listening to people who don’t value me

• Zooming out so far, I can hear my personal doomsday clock ticking via my own internalised ageism, ableism, and pressure to leave a mark

On soft headed days, I get in my own way by:

• Ignoring the TO DO list and trying to out-create myself

• A flitting from one idea to the next with a failure to connect

• Seeking out harmful things as a priority - e.g. searching for the nasty internet comments, going to unsafe places, trying to get the wrong people to like me

• Blaming myself for not being able to play the game, engage with capitalism effectively, or use the time I have to create some blockbuster idea that puts me on easy street

• Ignoring pretty much every version of self-care available

• Avoiding the work, the people, the feelings

• Pinning myself to the desk and goading the work out of me - “you feel shit anyway, may as well get the shit things done!”

No wonder it ends up hurting me.

Image: rope swing in a big tree by a lake.

When work equals bad, some self-punishment is permissible

I always thought that the soft headed days were the darker seasons within the creative cycle. I punish myself, shed another layer of skin, and then grow some cool crap out of the corpse of the previous day once I get my head back on straight. Mmmmm idea composting, yummy!

Knowing this, I gave myself a leave pass. Give a bad day (or week) to the Gods and let the flowers grow later. The price of doing business means recognising that I can’t be up all the time and it is OK to be un-OK on occasion. Swings and roundabouts, and all that!

But the honest answer is when the soft head feeling comes up, I add to it. I batter and bruise that tenderness with a form of benign and/or covert neglect.

I feel the sensation, blame myself and try to outrun it. I run right off the plan the stronger version of me put together. This further compounds the sensations and sets me up to continue to do more and more things that affirms the pain until it becomes akin to an act of self-sabotage.

It’s a boring little story that I put on repeat subconsciously and unconsciously.

I know who I am, what I want to do, and why I feel compelled to do it. But I am often derailed by how very little interest I have in doing business in the same way as the social media social pages say I should. I am a puppy chasing her own tail as I bite into and then let go of what doesn’t feel right, only to start chasing again.

Only, I am not a puppy anymore. More like an ailing old dog. One that knows their own mind but gets confused by her surroundings and a little overwhelmed by it all.

I know I can’t be the only person who does this. Watching the other freelancers and, despite not wanting anything the other freelancer is doing or their life, looks back at my own tasks and wonder why what I set ourselves isn’t as shiny.

This is the trap of melancholy for the life you won’t live against the one you are.

Which is usually fine, until your head is feeling pulpy and unstraight.

What I need on a soft headed day is:

• A moment to express how I feel and acknowledge it

• Humour and the chance not to take myself so seriously

• People who are motivated by creativity, community, purpose, and doing good things

• Enough awareness to pull back from self-sabotage

• Easier ways to be kinder to me

And to view the plans in front of me as a gift, and:

• Trust in the person I am on stronger days and what they plan for me

• Remind myself that I designed this job and I can tweak it until the day feels better

• Make the gentler, “ease into it” tasks a priority

• Be a better boss to me

But most of all, I’ve come to realise that on soft headed days, I need to:

• Write out the poison

• Be vulnerable enough to share it

• Trust the plans of Previous Me

• Get the hell on with it