The cage of important thoughts

This week I decided to free myself from the cage of Important Thoughts.

Can I be honest? Lately I’ve found writing almost impossible. An exercise in self-doubt and frustration.

Not because I don’t love writing (I do. I did. I have. I hope I will again at some point) or because there’s nothing to say (there is so much to say about everything), but because I’ve been playing an exceptionally un-fun game with my mind.

My little inner critic has been having a field day. Every thought that bubbles to the surface gets dragged through a filter of ‘is this meaningful enough? does it really matter?’, often before it even makes it to completion. It’s a perfect storm of toxic perfectionism.

If you want to suck the joy and humanity out of something I thoroughly recommend this process.

And I can totally understand why some protective part of me decided that Important Thoughts Only was a necessary writing rule. Living in these times of accelerating collapse, and live streamed genocide, and political chaos really makes everything hold so much weight. Add to that a lifetime of casually imbibed perfectionism and people pleasing as a survival mechanism, plus a jumble of bullshit ‘marketing rules’ and we’re in for a good time.

I can totally understand why my nervous system would take all that and freeze up. Like a deer in the headlights — so much happening below the surface but only a silent hypervigilance to show for it. Given those circumstances, of course writing would start to feel like a threat rather than a simple way to express my thoughts and experiences.

But fuck. I want to write. I want to spill my thoughts onto a digital page for you. I want to connect. There are thoughts about being a human and living in a body that want to come out. Thoughts about magic and liberation and power and belonging.

The thing about perfectionism, in all its insidious guises, is that it’s an inherently deadening force.

Perfect isn’t alive. It’s flat, tight, rigid. In my head perfect conjures a porcelain doll. Pinched face. Tiny waist. There’s no room for breath. No room for humanity. No room to be in process or be wrong or admit it or learn. Perfect is a tool of dominance culture (thank you, Tema Okun) that I want no part of.

So I’m freeing myself from the weight of meaningful. I guess I’ll just write what feels alive and see what happens. From now on, I’m going to try trusting that I am a conduit for something to be expressed, and that my work is to open the channel rather than judge what comes through.