I realized that I’ve been having a quiet, months-long temper tantrum.

The last time I tried to knit something, I couldn’t get my gauge to come out right. That means that my stitches were too big for the pattern I was knitting, so anything I tried to knit would end up being too big.

I went down a needle size to see if my stitches would be small enough; same problem. I went down another needle size, and another—same problem. A problem I hadn’t really encountered in two years of obsessive knitting. So I put the project away, and nine months later I still haven’t knit anything.

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When I’m experiencing a bunch of negative emotions around something I have to do, I stop fighting it.

I just let myself take a break and give myself permission to not do the thing, if it’s really going to be that big a deal.

Neither my identity nor my worthiness is on the line. Okay, maybe I’ll let someone down. Maybe I’ll let myself down. But so be it.

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Nebulous tasks are always the easiest ones to put off.

Even if you have clearly defined what you are going to do (“Write first draft” or “Fill out recommendation form”), there is an ugly amorphousness to certain things on our to-do list. We just don’t know how long they are going to take, and we suspect that it isn’t going to be a fun experience to do them. This one is going to require an uncertain amount of effort, attention, and focus; that one requires us to pull something out of ourselves that we aren’t sure we have. It makes perfect sense to choose something smaller, better defined, or practiced.

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I have an ongoing text conversation with my cousin in which we seek to solve the problems of the universe…or at the very least, our own.

Recently, we observed how out of balance we can get if we follow advice meant for someone with a dramatically different temperament. “I don’t think everything is healed by action,” I said. “Rest is important. But probably if you’re a person who is constantly resting, you need more action.”

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In these pandemic times, there’s little difference between the days for work-at-home types like me.

Sure, once the things get rolling, there are more messages and pings on a weekday, and there is more traffic in my tiny city. But the predawn hours are tranquil; an early Sunday is indistinguishable from an early Monday. Both are dark and still.

So why would my Sunday self be unable to write while my Monday self is capable of it? Why does my Sunday self seek to crawl back into bed?

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