I wanted to start this blog as a sort of cornucopia of information, on hot complex topics made digestible through publishing well-researched, readable articles. The idea was to inform people about everyday legal things. I wanted to provide answers to normal people on what they could and couldn’t do and let them run, guilt-free and wild with the hard legwork having been done. So I started. I planned, researched, and began writing a massive article on the pitfalls of working from home from abroad, and how to make this possible. I had other ideas as well, like COVID-19 and the employment relationship, what happens to your insurance when you travel during the pandemic against FCO advice, and other dry legal points which everyone suddenly had to deal with, but no one could be bothered with.
Big dreams, good intentions, practical nightmare. With a full-time job there were a number of logistical barriers to fulfilling this. The biggest however was my inner critic. I made the end game, the goal so big and unattainable in my brain that I couldn’t bypass my perfectionism enough to publish the articles. I was scared they were not thoroughly researched enough, not practical enough, not engaging enough. Even more than this I did not have the energy and mental wherewithal to push myself to research more or to write better.
I purchased a domain, I created a website, all the easy steps were covered. A year on and still it all lay dormant. So, what changed? The answer: misery in the form of a big fat bill incoming when my annual subscription automatically renewed.
I am sure I am not the only one to fall foul of the automatic renewal function. The reason this time was I had become a victim of my own Ostrich Syndrome ™ - i.e. shoving my head in the sand and hoping that either (a) the problem would go away and I would stop searching for something outside of my day job / stop wanting to write; or (b) I would get more motivation to start the blog and suddenly release pure gold standard articles into interspace. After lamenting to a friend about my £££ subscription bill it was pointed out to me that I should take the universe’s sign and get writing. A good point, especially for someone who likes to “take signs”.
And where are we now? Well, it turns out that putting myself under silly pressure to do something which was, in my current mental space, not attainable, was not particularly useful. Well-researched articles over complex topics for the general public = my type on paper. Reality being a s**t tonne of work + perfectionism = no go. Maybe you have experienced the same?
Your inner chimp will tell you that you are not good enough, that you cannot do it. Try flipping the switch and approaching it from a different angle. For me this meant lifestyle articles/streams of consciousness came much easier. Perhaps not as sexy as Plan A but here we are.
Have a look and see what is manageable. Sometimes it is better to just start and do anything than to wait for the right time to do what your brain has told you is the “perfect” thing. In a world of instant gratification, fuelled by social media like Instagram, we are sold the dream that we have to live every second of our lives being the end product shown to us in films, advertisements and in our own perception of other people. Secret – no one is the finished product. That is the fun of it. How boring would life be if everything was already “where it is supposed to be”.