Last week I finally did something that I've been trying to do for a while - to write as many articles as I could in a single day so that I could relax more and do other things in my free time other than taking care of this goal that I wish to complete, which is to write and publish something every single day until November.
I did all that at the beginning of my working season, when I first came to Germany. I had nothing to do with my limited free time, so I spent most of it just writing and reading. In time, however, I started doing a few other things.
First, I started buying books, which meant that I had to spend more and more time reading if I wanted to finish all of them. Then, I purchased a comic book in German hoping it would help me learn the language faster, and I began translating it in English, which takes quite a lot of time. I also do Duolingo lessons every single day.
That doesn't sound like a lot, but if you add to that relaxing activities that I want to do, such as watching movies or TV shows, alone or with my girlfriend, listening to music, watching some YouTube, and so on, then you start to realize why adding writing and posting something every single day on the list can make things a bit stressful. Either I make an effort to do as much work as possible in a single day, so I can do more things throughout the week, or I sacrifice one or two activities so that I have enough time to write and post.
I managed to solve this problem in the past by simply writing in advance. I would write more articles than I needed, and then I would just edit and post them every day instead of having to write anything.
That, in time, changed. The more things I began doing, the less time I wanted to spend writing a lot of articles at once. It eventually got to a point where I would have to write, edit and post every single day, which was, obviously, time consuming. That, plus all the other things I do, made my free time feel more like work than time I could use to relax.
Last week I managed to finally force myself to sit down for two hours and do nothing but write. I managed to finish 6 articles. That, I thought, would make my week a little bit more relaxing. I could spend more time doing the things I wanted, instead of the things I would have to do.
And it worked. I had an easier time doing what I wanted. I had more time to relax and sleep. I especially spent a bit more time reading books.
One aspect that I didn't take into consideration was my ability to write during this "week of relaxation". The way I thought about it was something like this: I would write 6 articles so that I can free up my week a bit, and whenever I would get an idea during that week I would transform it into an article, which would be added to the pile of already written articles. This, in theory, would mean I would have content prepared ahead of that so I would not have to sacrifice my break to write and edit - I would just use all the articles that I wrote whenever I got an idea.
What I didn't take into think about was the fact that I might not get that many ideas. And that's exactly what happened. I assumed that just because I managed to come up with something every day whenever I had to write I could just do the same thing, just in a more relaxed way, when I didn't have to write anything.
I was wrong.
Need creates a way. Needing to do something forces you, at times, to find ways to do that thing, even if, normally, you wouldn't be able to.
In my case, having to write every single day due to my goal was the "need", which forced me to always think of ideas so that I could take care of that daily task. Once the "need" was gone, due to my pile of articles that I wrote in a single day, the number of ideas I got also decreased. I still managed to write sometimes, but not enough.
In theory, I succeeded at my initial goal: to have more free time to relax. But unless I could make myself spend some of that time writing, I would soon have to go back to my daily writing and posting routine, which would make everything stressful once again.
Writing became, sadly, harder to do simply because I didn't have to write anymore, and therefore, the lack of "need" reduced the amount of energy I would subconsciously put into the process of finding ideas. This is an example of how a "harsh situation" might actually benefit you in ways that you're not really aware of at the beginning. Even if the situation you find yourself in can be stressful and unpleasant, it might be what you need to perform properly.
Do I have a solution to this problem?
No, not really. The only one I can think of is simply getting my act together and trying to write more often, even when I don't need to or feel like it. That will require a little bit of discipline. If that doesn't work, then I'll need to find a way to make it easier for me to think of and write articles.
Regardless, this is an interesting realization, something you might want to think about. It might allow you to change your mind about some of the things that are going on in your life, once you realize, if you realize, that they might be what's helping you move forward, despite the other disadvantages.