Emotionally Sober (#FAWM Countdown)

As I count down the days until FAWM (just 1 more day) I’m catching up on my reading. Julia Cameron’s latest book, Write for Life: Creative Tools for Every Writer (a 6-week Artist’s Way Program), hits me with this thought: Emotionally Sober.

Struck sober at age twenty-nine, I was at the mercy of my moods. Without alcohol to buffer them, my moods were savage. I needed a new way to write and to live. I needed to be emotionally sober. – Julia Cameron, Write for Life.

She stays sober by writing her morning pages daily and by writing 2 pages of whatever writing project she is working on.

Another thing that inspired me was reading Becca Syme’s words of wisdom in yesterday’s email, about February Social Media Challenge (no social media for the first 30 minutes of your day):

If I could put my finger on the one piece of advice I give the most often recently, for any number of different problems, it would by far be: just stop with the social media. – Becca Syme

This answer might solve:

• Empathy problems (where the Empathy Strength is overloaded by too many people having access to your emotions)
• Input problems (where you’re using low-quality social media input to fill the well, but it’s only making a penny instead of a dollar because it’s also taking things from you)
• Intellection problems (where you’re “really quick”ing yourself into social media when you’re stuck, only to realize it’s not making you unstuck
• Strategic problems (where you’re avoiding the pain of being stuck by soothing on social media)
• Learner problems (where this one time, you learned something on social media, and now your Learner is getting co-opted by your dopamine receptors into doing social media “really quick”)
• Relationship-Building problems (where you’re isolated and lonely, and you’re hoping social media will fill your bucket, but again, it’s pennies instead of dollars)
• Influencing problems (where you’re not getting the impact you want, and you’re hoping social media will give you some impact hits, but again, pennies, not dollars)

Yes, we all know this, right, but sometimes, we need to hear it from somebody outside of ourselves, sometimes we need to be reminded of what we already know, and sometimes we learn something new about something we thought we knew.