Insertia (in-ser-sha) n. The things you do when you don't feel like doing anything

Instead of shower thoughts, I have 'just dropped the kids off in the morning' thoughts and this one popped up.  For those of you not hip to my constant word combination tendencies, it combines 'insert' and 'inertia.'

It's been a theme for me over the past three years.  Grief is one of those extremes that often has extreme countermeasures.  There is active and inactive grief and both seem to come with the tendency to self-destruct or self-improve.  I've been 'lucky' enough that my grief mostly takes on an 'active self-improvement' turn most days.  And yes, I look like I'm doing extremely well.  Look at Krista overachieving again!  Except I've been using it as a sort of shield to keep people away.  Sorry, can't hang out; I have an edit to do.  Sorry, no time for that; I've invented an ambitious deadline to guarantee I have no free time.  Most people get it.  You're not exactly in a hurry to get attached to someone when the fatalistic threat of losing someone else is there.  It doesn't keep me from raising my nephews or talking to my dad, the people I live with, but it does mean that most other people have to take the initiative and just show up.

Insert life plan here, do the things...  This is what insertia is for me.  Long-term plans became really hazy, although they weren't terribly clear from the get-go.  Ask my friends how muddled my short-term plans are and those are the ones I seem most sure about.  Today, I'm going to bake and draw and exercise and... no, I just ended up drawing all day.  Yes, I went above and beyond in one category and yet I'll still beat myself up because I didn't bake and exercise.  My day-to-day is often a strange mix of pride in one achievement and punishing myself for what I didn't do.  I still very loosely make plans and this insertia is mostly where I feel like there is nothing to do, but do things anyway.

When traumatic life events shake the core of what you are, you have to shake back.  You develop this stupid rationale for why you shouldn't do things.  Why eat when you can't taste it?  Why draw when it's just going to look like crap?  Why think when your thoughts are useless?  Too easy to go that route, let me tell you, so what happened?  Well, at some point, you just get too tired to do anything and even your brain shuts up for a second...  What if I did those things anyway?

I didn't have one of those epiphanies where you tell yourself they wouldn't want you to waste your life this way.  Nobody wants to grieve and they did the same when they lost people in their lives.  It's not for me to shut down the process of grieving, but I sure as hell didn't want to 'ride it out' either.  It sucked and the guilt only compounded that I was making my own life meaningless.

I was already writing.  When my grandma died I was halfway through the eighth book in my nine-book series (yes, they are finished, but they aren't above some final edits.  Even my meticulously edited first book has a few small errors.  I can't name a bestseller that is perfect, so I'm not devastated).  My mom died two months later.  I don't remember that week terribly well, but I had to balance grief with making life normal for my nephews so there was no falling into the pits of despair.  After that week, I started exercising again.  I started writing again.  I was still completely devastated, but I was also fed up with stopping, making excuses every time life took a giant shit on me.  I was always talking about the books with my mom, always showing her how much healthier I was getting.  I did those things for me and stopping for anyone and anything else was unacceptable.

In reality, I'm not a very expressive person unless I know you very well and even then I can be downright stoic sometimes.  Creativity is where I've always let myself explode into the world.  I can't guarantee I'm going to shit rainbows but I do take pride in everything I do.  Sometimes I really have to force myself to do it, but it's not some clumsy attempt at pushing through a creative block.  To be honest, I rarely ever have those.  Sometimes I just don't know how to motivate myself to release anything.  I know better now, but there will still be stubborn moments where I 'can't even'.  I can, I'm just being a pain in the ass.

So I fill those moments of fear and doubt with action.  It doesn't have to be perfect.  I can wait until I have one of those good days to tirelessly clean up the muddy bits.  Practice the art of insertia.  Celebrate your flaws and avoid the guilt of doing nothing.  Fail hard and get better at life.  Don't waste any chance to prove to yourself you can still shine.