Welcome back to Alchemy for Authors!
Are you roadworthy as an author? Are you set up to go the distance with your author career?
In this week’s solo episode, I reflect on changes I need to make in all areas of my life to set myself up for a sustainable, joyful author career. I share the questions I’ve been asking myself around procrastination, my health, and emotional and mental baggage, and I discuss how some small everyday stressors might be sabotaging your success.
If you’re ready to take inventory of where you’re at and where you might be holding yourself back on your author journey, then this is the episode for you. My hope is it inspires you to take action on the small, but important, things you’ve been avoiding, let go of the things you no longer need, and plan for a future of joy and ease.
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Find the full transcript of this episode below.
Episode 88: Your Author Self Warrant of Fitness
Jo: Hello, my lovelies. Welcome to Episode 88 of Alchemy for Authors: Your Author Self Warrant of Fitness.
In today’s episode, I’m going to share some of my thoughts about how we can do an inventory check on where we’re at as a sustainably functioning author. This is something that I think we need to check in on ourselves regularly to make sure that we are looking after ourselves and our business and our career in a way that is actually going to best serve us.
So here’s how this episode came about. A couple of days ago, I broke a tooth. Not a big deal. I know lots of people have broken teeth before, but I am a complete chicken when it comes to dentists and needles and doctors and anything in the medical profession. So, needless to say, breaking the tooth is not, in my world anyway, generally thought of as good news. Probably not anybody’s world. However, if you can tell from my voice, I’m actually feeling quite uplifted from the experience. So, hear me out.
Because of my horrible phobia for dentists and all the rest of it, you can imagine that my visits to the dentist are not that regular. In fact, I found out through my dentist, as I was making an appointment for my tooth, that it’s been two and a half years since I last visited. When I was there last, I was told by my dentist that in the near future, I would need to consider getting crowns for a couple of my teeth because there were signs that they were beginning to crack and otherwise, you know, things like this could happen, you could break a tooth. From that time, two and a half years ago, I have been so super meticulous with dental hygiene and being very, very careful of what I ate, staying away from anything that I thought would be too hard or potentially crack my teeth or anything like that. So no popcorn for me, or just very, very careful with the kernels. No hard candy, nuts, anything like that. So that’s been two and a half years of me having in the back of my mind the fact that one day I’m going to have to go get some crowns and it was going to be very expensive from what was quoted to me. And hence I’d been avoiding it and procrastinating it something crazy. But I’d also been carrying the burden, the weight of knowing that this was in my future for two and a half years. This sounds ridiculous.
So, when, unexpectedly, kind of, I guess, my tooth actually did break, a part of me was actually pretty happy about it. I know, this sounds completely bizarre, but the reasoning is, all of a sudden, I had this huge feeling of relief. The decision to go back to the dentist, to spend the money, to go through the procedure, despite my irrational fears around it, was taken out of my hands. Now I’m left with no choice. So needless to say, right away, I spent a good amount of time calling around, trying to get an appointment at a dentist, my dentist, any dentist. And even so, it’s still a few days away from recording this. However, by the time that this goes live, I should have had the first of what may end up being a good few dental appointments because of this tooth and maybe some others.
Now, here in New Zealand, I’m going off topic a little bit, this will all make sense, I promise, but here in New Zealand, we have something called a Warrant of Fitness that we have for our vehicles. Depending upon the age of our vehicle, we have to get it serviced and fully checked that it’s road worthy and safe on a regular basis. For some vehicles that could be every six months, a year, or I think newer vehicles have a little bit more of a grace period. Having just gone through that with my own vehicle and spending the money to make sure that everything was all good, so it was all roadworthy and it could pass its inspection, between that and my broken tooth, I have had on my mind this idea of how we as authors, as writers, should really be doing some regular check ins with ourself as to how we are best functioning and how our career is best functioning for the long term. Is there longevity to what we are doing? Are we making things harder for ourselves than they need to be? So this regular check in, this warrant of fitness for our author self and our author career is what I’m going to be talking about today. Because, as my tooth experience has taught me, sometimes the avoidance of doing the necessary things takes more of a toll than actually just doing what we need to do. And I’m sure in some way, if you’re listening to this, you have experienced that yourself.
Recently, I’ve also been taking a bit of a deep dive look into my author career goals for the next 16 months. And I talked a little bit about this in the intro to my previous episode. So I’ve been going through and I’ve been doing a whole bunch of things that I have been putting off doing. So I went through and updated the spreadsheet that was very much neglected for this year on my author expenses and earnings. Usually I’m pretty diligent with keeping that up to date every year. This year, it most certainly fell by the wayside. And so going through and really taking that real deep dive look into my finances was kind of a pleasant surprise that I actually started this year off really strong. Granted, due to a lack of attention to marketing my books and whatnot, recently, sales have dropped off. But I’m still doing better than I was the year before. So, that’s really positive. I have also spent this year procrastinating finishing editing my book Broken Lies, my gothic suspense novel that I am really wanting to get out this year. One of the many reasons I think I’ve been procrastinating it is because every time I opened up the Word document and started to work my way through all my editor’s suggestions, my computer would throw hissy fits and Microsoft Word would freeze, and I would just get frustrated because tech issues, computer issues, they are definitely my nemesis. And so I would close it down and just put off doing it. Now, all it took was a little bit of time to do some Googling online to realize that it was my ProWritingAid add-in that Microsoft Word was struggling with because it was such a long document. So I temporarily removed that. I only really use it in the very absolute, very last round of editing to make sure that there’s no weird punctuation errors or things that I might’ve missed. But I removed that and lo and behold, my document in Word is working fine, and I can actually get my project edited now. This literally only took a few minutes to remedy. It’s so stupid that it took so little to fix, and yet, it has been bothering me since the beginning of the year when I got this manuscript back. Yeah, there is a theme, obviously, of me procrastinating the things that I know that I really should be doing and would make my life much, much easier.
I have also spent the time clearing out and backing up my computer, that’s something that I should do more regularly than I do. But just by decluttering it of nonsense files and screenshots and things that I didn’t need, actually again felt quite freeing. I’ve done little things too, like replaced my office chair. It was something that again, I’d been procrastinating because I mean, the other one did the job. It just wasn’t super comfortable. And the hydraulicy thing that kept the chair up, was no longer working as it should, and my fear was that I was going to be on a call with somebody doing a podcast interview and all of a sudden I would disappear from view as my chair lowered itself to the ground. That would have been fun.
So with all these things in mind, I’ve been reflecting on the importance of ensuring that we are healthy authors, creating a sustainable way of being. We’re not going to get our writing done if we are not at the best that we can be. Part of this is kind of like decluttering. And I’ve talked about decluttering when it comes to manifestation, allowing ourselves room in our lives through the symbolic gesture of decluttering and getting rid of things that we no longer need or use or are broken, so that the good, juicy stuff that we want in our lives has room to come into our lives.
Denise Duffield Thomas, one of my favourite people who talks about manifestation and money blocks, she herself is a money mindset coach, in one of her manifestation courses that I have, she points to decluttering as an absolute cornerstone to manifestation. She says that living in clutter, and I relate to this also to the mental and emotional clutter, not just physical, it’s like “having an old computer running with lots of different programs. When you clear it out, suddenly you have a lot more bandwidth to use on creating something new, plus the energy to actually do something about it.”
Maybe you’ve felt this way too, that you’re absolutely procrastinating getting back to your book to do some of the marketing you might need to do, any of that kind of thing. And it’s not until you actually take a look at your office space or where you work and maybe tidy your desk or declutter or something like that, that all of a sudden, you’re excited to actually do the tasks that you want to do. There is something to be said for a tidy space and the impact it has on our motivation.
And I relate that to mental and emotional clutter because a lot of us carry that mental emotional clutter around with us. It’s all that baggage, all those things that just sit in our head, taking up space. Those nagging thoughts that, Oh, we should do this. We should do that. All that’s really overdue that we don’t deal with. And yet. That nagging voice doesn’t go away. It doesn’t disappear. It’s still there, but it’s taking up space where maybe that space could be better utilized for percolating ideas for our new novel or something like that. So taking a life inventory for our author self warrant of fitness I believe is kind of crucial.
When we take care of ourselves and our environments, then we’re showing up. We’re showing up and we’re saying we are worthy. We are worth looking after. We deserve to be healthy. If one of our energetic blocks in our author career is not feeling deserving or worthy of success or abundance, then decluttering, taking a life inventory, might be a really good place to start. In my case, by the simple act of making a dental appointment, I am saying, you know what, I actually deserve to have good healthy teeth. I actually deserve to be able to eat my food without in the back of my mind worrying that Oh, is today going to be the day where something goes sideways and I crack a tooth? Right? And I didn’t realize quite how much that was weighing on me. It had become so imbued in my day to day.
So it’s worth looking at anything that maybe you’re carrying around with you, that maybe you just need to bite the bullet and go and do, get it off your mind. Because trust me, there is a real feeling of freedom, and you do deserve to be healthy. You do deserve to eliminate some of that stress that you’re carrying around with you. If you want to be a successful author, have a successful author career, then you’re going to have to believe on all levels and not just superficially that you’re worth it. So this is decluttering, sometimes the physical as well, knowing that there’ll be an energetic result.
So we start with some of the easy things, that’s what I would recommend. Some of the things that are just easy. I mean, it really wouldn’t have been that hard at any time for me to have picked up the phone and just made a dental appointment prior to having my tooth actually break, which now is probably going to be more expensive and require more work than if I had just got on and done it earlier. So don’t do as I have done and wait until the choice is actually taken away from you. Despite how ridiculously freeing it feels for me right now, I have still likely made things much more difficult than they needed to be. While also not putting myself and my wellbeing first, what message have I been sending out to the universe? It has not been that I deserve good things. It has not been that I deserve to be healthy, that I deserve to do the stuff to look after myself. So that is obviously something that I want to be working on, particularly as I try and make more gains in my author career over the next 16 months.
Now here’s another one, and I am super prone to this, I know so many people who are and when life goes a little bit sideways, you know, sometimes misery likes company. But how many of us get stuck into the spiral of complaining? So think about in your life, do a life check inventory of where in your life are you complaining? What are you complaining about? Try as much as you can without judgment to write them down and then stand back and reconsider these complaints as if you are hearing them from a friend or from somebody else. Think about what advice you might offer that person. Because sometimes stepping back and removing ourselves from the emotional load of the things that we’re actually complaining or stressing about, actually gives us some clarity and helps us to see solutions easier. So if you’ve got a list of complaints, and they can be big or little complaints, sometimes, you know, if we were to sit down and actually track in a day everything we complain about, we would probably be surprised. But can you see any instances in your complaints where you’re actually causing yourself unnecessary suffering with your choices? Because like I said before, without realizing it, I was minimizing my enjoyment of certain foods and complaining that I knew I had to go to the dentist but I didn’t want to because it was too expensive, I don’t like needles, and ooh it’s scary. Here I am an adult and I’m acting like an absolute chicken with really, really weak arguments and excuses for doing what I knew I needed to do. Two and a half years, I’d been carrying that around with me. Honestly, I am just stuck on how absolutely ridiculous that sounds to me now.
When I was writing the final few chapters of my paranormal cozy book, Hades’s Haunt, I was hard up against an editing deadline that I’d already pushed back on several times and was left with really no wriggle room. My computer at the time was throwing tantrums left, right, and centre. It had done long, like very long days in the week up to that deadline. It was already six to seven years old. And I had had it in the back of my mind that I was going to need to replace it for well over a year. So at that time I was just praying out loud to all the writing gods, please let me finish this book. Once I finish this book, then I’ll think about getting a new laptop. Between these prayers to the writing gods, I was also pausing every couple of minutes to quickly back up my work on an external hard drive and re-send my manuscript via email to myself because, you know, you can never be too careful. And having to reboot my computer over and over again because it had frozen or conked out and sometimes it was taking a very long time to even turn on.
Of course, and I’m sure you can see this coming, despite my prayers, my computer thought this was the opportune time with only two chapters to go, one day pretty much until the deadline, to cark it, to completely die on me, it totally self-destructed. Now, I went into a real panic, of course, because I was already stressed about trying to get the last couple of chapters of the book done, let alone my kind of edits. So my final edits before I got it to the editor. But I also had an interview scheduled with a guest for the Alchemy for Authors podcast within a few days time. And it was a guest that I was so thrilled to have on and it had taken me a lot of courage to ask them on to the show and lots of scheduling to make it actually happen. How I was going to do that without a computer, I really wasn’t sure.
There are many times that I often catch myself thinking, Oh my gosh, my laptop is my life. What would I do without it? So panic mode totally set in. And after trying everything I could to try and revive my laptop and Googling things on my phone and everything like that, I had to call time on it. It had served a good life, but now I had a very short timeframe to somehow scrape money together to afford a new laptop, despite it having been a very expensive month for other reasons. And I had to scour the city for the laptop that I wanted. Because if I was going to spend such, in my mind, a large amount of money on a computer, not only did I want it to last, I wanted it to have the keyboard that I liked. I wanted to really love it and not regret the purchase, not settle for something just to get my book done. And I admit, I’m pretty particular with what I wanted. So it took me the better part of that day, calling multiple businesses, driving all around the city, being met with one disappointment after the other, the computers they had were the wrong specs, or the wrong keyboard, or they just sold the last one, or it was on back order. And yeah, I could have settled for something different. It crossed my mind multiple times, but I really did figure that if I was going to part with such a big chunk of money for a laptop that was going to serve for podcasting and my books and everything, I needed to get the right laptop. That was just a non-negotiable.
So after being close to tears on several occasions and knowing that time was running out while I was trying to find a laptop. Who knew in a city that finding a specific laptop, and we’re not talking a super high-end fancy pants laptop either, but just the specific laptop that I wanted, I finally found the only one in the entire city that I was able to purchase, and get a discount. So that worked in my favour. Get home, get it all set up with the software and everything that I needed, and I managed to finalise Hades’s Haunt. I got it to my editor right before midnight, New Zealand time. But wow, was that stressful. So like I mentioned, I had been thinking about replacing that laptop for over a year. The thought had kept coming to me that, Ooh, how reliable is this laptop now? I’ve had it for a long time. It’s showing the odd signs of just being a little bit wonky. Things aren’t always going as smoothly as it should. I should really consider putting some money aside and planning for replacing it. However, I didn’t. I knew the day was coming. Some part of me knew the day was coming where I was going to have to replace it. But procrastination and a whole range of excuses: it’s too expensive, I’ll just make do with this right now, It’ll be fine. All of that overrode my intuition that said otherwise. If I’d just listened to my intuition and started looking, researching and saving for the new laptop way back when I first started having that inkling that the time was coming, I would have saved myself probably a heck of a lot of stress and drama. Plus, I would have got a little few extra hours sleep that night.
So it is obvious from many of my life choices that I am a slow learner when it comes to these things. I am my own worst enemy. If I were to step back and really weigh up what the constant worry and procrastination was costing me over the extended period of time and instead had just done something about it, I could have just saved myself so much trouble, so much mental, emotional bandwidth, which again could have been much better utilised writing new books or something of that sort.
So if we as authors endeavour to keep the drama on the page and not let it take over our lives, then regularly taking inventory of our author self and life is a necessity. We are always going to come up against drama. Things are going to go sideways in our life and our personal lives and that. And sometimes the only way to deal with them is really just to give ourselves space and grace to go through that experience. But other times, if the drama is more around us than with us, my recommendation has always been to try and keep it on the page, not let it overwhelm and suck up our life force. Now I am one of the absolute worst for this. This year I’ve been surrounded by a lot of drama. A lot of people that I absolutely love and adore have been going through really, really tough times. And being the person I am, I have felt for them on every level. I have tried to help. I’ve tried to support, and it has taken its pound of flesh for sure. And the way it’s taken its pound of flesh is not just the emotional mental toll. It’s taken a toll on my physical wellbeing because stress, as we all know, leads to a whole lot of health issues. It’s taken a toll on some of my other personal relationships, and it is 100 percent taken a huge toll, a huge bite out of my writing, hence the lack of published books I have to show for myself this year. And this is why it is so essential to help negate the impact of drama in our lives upon our author self, upon our author life. We need to take stock of what needs actioning, right now. Because writing when we’re unhealthy is really hard. We know this. Writing when we’re in the midst of personal dramas is hard. Writing with the wrong or slow or broken equipment is also hard. Carrying around with us a list of “shoulds” is debilitating.
So why do we do it? Because we all do it. Maybe not to the extent of me, and I really hope that for you, but in some ways we all do this. We need to be asking, what is the cost to our mental health, our physical health and our author careers in doing so? How are we, in small ways and large ways, self-sabotaging our own potential for success? So here are some questions that I thought of that are worth asking yourself. Maybe grab a pen and paper, do some journaling around this, but I promise you just even having the awareness of the areas where we might be holding ourselves back is going to be so invaluable to helping us plan a way forward.
So here are some questions to help you take stock of your Author Self Warrant of Fitness.
- What boundaries do I need to reset? They can be boundaries for yourself, in your personal life, or they could be boundaries in your author career.
- Are there tough discussions that you need to be having with the people in your life? For example, are people respecting your writing time, or are you being constantly interrupted because maybe they don’t see it as a real job? Or, in my case, am I too involved in the drama of others and being available to others as they go through their drama, that I’m not actually leaving myself much time for my own wellbeing and my own pursuits.
- Ask yourself, what projects have I been putting off? Why? And that’s important. If we can get to the why we’ve been putting things off, maybe we might find that some of the projects that we’ve said we wanted to do, feel like “shoulds”, feel like obligations to maybe somebody else and aren’t actually aligned with who we are and what we want out of our author career.
- Ask yourself, what do I need to let go of or delegate? And be really truthful here, because if you’re like me and you always have a to do list written for the week. Look at those items that you find yourself constantly transferring from one list to the next, week to week. If you are like me and you find yourself doing that, maybe you need to get real with yourself and ask yourself, are you ever actually going to do them? Or would it be better to delegate them out or just forget about them completely? Think of that emotional, mental burden that you’re carrying with you, thinking of that thing, shifting it from week to week as something that you should be doing. There is power and a great deal of relief in just dropping some commitments, obligations and “shoulds” altogether. Remember, this is your life. Being an author was a choice, so you want to make it a joyful one.
- Ask yourself, what would make my author career easier? For example, creating an expenses and income spreadsheet for the year. If you’re not doing that, I highly recommend you do. Make sure you’re keeping track of what you’re spending on your author career and what you’re earning.
- Consider, what equipment do I need to replace or upgrade or need to make plans for doing this? What would make my life easier?
- This is a big one. This is the one that I started this entire episode harping on about. But where am I neglecting my own needs? Ask yourself, am I scheduling rest and play? Am I scheduling artist dates? Do I have health issues that I really need to take stock of? Appointments I need to make with a doctor or the dentist? Do I need to implement a diet or exercise plan into my life? What is it that I’ve been avoiding? Because like I said earlier, we all know that nobody is having a sustainable author career without looking after their health to the best of their ability. If you’ve got that option, make sure you’re following through with that.
- Ask yourself, who do I need to forgive or forget? We tend to forget or minimise in our mind the toll that holding on to past hurts takes on us. Is it time to set the past free? Do a letting go ritual or speak to a therapist.
- Ask yourself, what is your biggest stressor right now? Is there an action you can take to fix this or reduce its impact?
- What unrealistic expectations have I set for myself that I need to let go of? Or what am I beating myself up about right now? For me, something that keeps coming back around is the changes that happen during the aging process and being in perimenopause. This has made me have to reevaluate a lot of my beliefs and expectations for myself, particularly in terms of appearance. I’m having to get really real with the fact that I am never going to be a twenty something year old again. That ship has sailed. And, realistically, there’s only so much I’m willing to do to return to my pre-perimenopausal body as well. So, it’s a choice I make. Therefore, it’s probably, in my best interest, to be happy where I’m at, and, enjoy the changes, enjoy the ride.
- Think about what’s really important to you. And I mean really important. Are you spending enough of your energies in that area of your life? Have you prioritized it? If you haven’t, why not? Or how can you? Are you doing the things you need to do to make your dreams a reality? Or, do you need to change up your dreams a little? Remember, and this is one of my favourite sayings, but remember that how you spend your days is how you spend your life.
So, by the time that this goes live, I would have had my first dental visit for my broken tooth and I’m visualizing the experience as being easy and comfortable and affordable and empowering, and to be completely honest with you, for somebody that has always been such a chicken about this stuff, I actually feel a good dose of excitement and anticipation about it because one, I feel like I’m actually being an adult here and taking charge of the situation. And it’s absolutely ridiculous, the relief I feel in knowing that I’m finally going to rid myself of a burden that’s been weighing on me for so long.
We all do this, I know we do, in some way or another. Hopefully not to the extent that I do, but in some way or the other, there are things that we carry around with us, there’s baggage and that that we carry around with us that would be better served letting go of. I do believe that these little stresses and things that we carry with us can really hold back our potential. We need to declutter it from our lives to make room for the better stuff, enhanced creativity, for example, expand our bandwidth for that.
I even have plans for once my teeth are all sorted and all that good stuff and I’ve paid off all those bills, then it’ll be off to the eye doctor for me because another thing I’ve been noticing, probably comes with the whole aging thing, is that my eyesight is not as good as it used to be. So that will be the next thing. And again, I’m excited about that. I’m excited to actually take care of this vessel that I’m in that will add to the longevity of me being able to continue writing and creating books and being an author. There is such a sense of freedom and relief in knowing that I’m taking charge of my life. There is such a sense of empowerment in knowing that I am doing what I need to do to be the best author version of myself. I feel, like I said, very adult, very grown up, but super excited too. And by dealing with some of these mundane things of everyday life, getting them off my plate, it’s going to help me thrive as a human being and as an author, because my attention’s not being wasted elsewhere.
So, there we are. There’s my little sharing with you today and I hope you’ve got something out of it and you are going to take the time to reflect and do an inventory on your author life right now, your author career, yourself as a human being. What are your needs? How are you meeting them? What are you carrying around with you that it is really time to let go? Would you pass your author warrant of fitness?
If you enjoyed today’s show, I would love to hear what your biggest “aha” moment has been and what you’re going to do to make things easier for yourself, what you’re going to let go of, what step you’re going to take to enhance your author self, your author career and to show up for yourself as somebody who is worthy and deserving, because you are.
If you would like to support this show, support this episode, which I really hope you do, please consider leaving a review. I say this every time, but it does make a huge difference and helps bring other listeners to my podcast. Or share it with a friend. Honestly, that one just gives me goosebumps. I love the idea of word of mouth, sharing things you love with others. You can also tag me on Instagram or Facebook @alchemyforauthors. If you want to make a donation to help support the costs of this show’s production, then you can do so by going to https://buymeacoffee.com/jobuer. That is also always appreciated and sincerely means the world to me.
But with that, my friend, I wish you a wonderful writing week ahead. Bye for now.
Author Career, Author Health, author mindset, Decluttering, Life Inventory, Sustainability