Understanding Why You’re Not Doing It

At the end of February I wrote a newsletter setting myself a challenge. I was going to post on Instagram every single day. I had not been good at being present online and I still hadn’t shaken the need to be perfect when I was, so I thought I’d do a challenge where I showed up with one of the many many photos in my camera roll every day.

And then I didn’t create anything for nearly two months.

It went beyond not even showing up on Instagram. I didn’t write anything either, not here on the blog or on Substack. I didn’t post to Stories, I certainly didn’t post to the grid.

This is the sort of thing it is easy to beat yourself up over, to say “what the hell is wrong with me that I can’t do this simple thing?”. But actually the way to fix problems of producitivity is with curiosity, not accusation.

Because yes, “what the hell is wrong with me?”…

Layer 1: Creative energy being diverted

The most obvious cause of my failure was the fact that all my creative energy was being diverted in other directions. I’d chosen to do this challenge during a month where I was job hunting in earnest and also putting together a book proposal.

We live in a “I should be able to do it all” culture where we think our creative productivity should be limitless, especially when multiple tasks (like writing job applications and making daily Instagram posts) aren’t the same kind of creativity. But, they come from the same stores, just directing the energy differently.

That is layer one. But layer one only happens because of the layers below it that have formed the shape of the ground for layer one to rest on.

When we’re analysing why we do things we often stop at layer one, because that gives us a logical reason for why we’ve not done something and we can carry on not doing the thing with a ready-made excuse.

What this understanding of the diverted creative energy actually does is ask more questions; like “why did I choose to focus my energy on those things rather than the Instagram challenge?”

Neither job hunting nor the book proposal were more time sensitive than the Instagram challenge; if anything, given that I was launching FWC in March being present online was more important in that window. And yet I, somewhere in my unconscious, decided it was more important to focus on those other things. Why?

Layer Two: Following the passion

A simple answer here is that I care more about getting an agent and book deal than I do about posting on Instagram every day. I also cared more about filling the gaping financial hole that would open up after my contract ended than I did about posting on Instagram every day.

Although these things weren’t urgent in a real time context, they felt more urgent to me. I experienced them as something I couldn’t wait for, because what I couldn’t wait for was creative fulfilment (the book) and certainty and stability (the job). I chose to focus on these above the challenge because they were more important.

That’s level two, the level that feels righteous and noble where you can feel good about why you didn’t do something. But it is rare that the truth is something that makes you look good. Or at least, that the truth is something that makes you comfortable.

Layer 3: Resisting the discomfort

The real reason I failed to follow through on my challenge, at least the realest reason I’m able to consciously process, is that I resisted the hell out of the idea. I distracted myself and came up with reasons and dug in my heels to resist doing something that felt deeply uncomfortable.

But it’s only posting on Instagram? And it is, but “posting on Instagram” means more than than just putting a photo and a few words on an internet platform. It is the shaping of self-hood, inventing the version of yourself you want to present to the world – but what if you’re not sure who that is? How do you begin to post a representation of yourself when that very self feels in smudgy blurred flux?

Especially when, for the seven years you have been posting on Instagram, it’s been to build a business; not posting as a multi-dimensional human with loves and joys but a business here to serve and provide value. As that business I had rules to follow, that I’d picked up and trained into myself, rules that told me that failure was showing up without strategy or a plan - the exact terms of the challenge.

The question is, really, how to move from being a brand to being a person?

A big question, an uncomfortable question, a question I hoped the flames of the challenge would answer but were too hot for me to go near.

I don’t have the answer. I don’t know what I’m going to do next yet. But I do know the questions I need to pursue to get somewhere – and that is half the battle.