Varsha Gupta

I think one of the reasons it took me years to start writing, and even longer to take my own writing seriously, and even longer to share it publicly without being overwhelmed with an obscure feeling of shame about wanting to share it...is that I really believed that there was something frivolous in wanting to do creative work. And that there was... See more

"Things that aren't doing the thing:

• Preparing to do the thing isn't doing the thing.


• Scheduling time to do the thing isn't doing the thing.


• Making a to-do list for the thing isn't doing the thing.


• Telling people you're going to do the thing isn't doing the thing.


• Messaging friends who may or may not be doing the thing isn't doing the thing.


• Writing a

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And it’s really easy to miss this point. It’s easy to always think “I can do this tomorrow” or “this is not a priority” or “this would never work”. And it’s hard, because sometimes those thoughts are correct. But I find that, unless I put in active effort, I’m the kind of person who’ll always have those thoughts. I’ll never actually act upon my... See more

Pondering why I don’t feel like doing what I say I want to do, yet discovering one more time how great it often feels after I’ve done it, is just another reliable way to distract myself from the effort of doing the next thing. There is no substitute for “accepting my feelings” (of laziness or boredom, or anxiety, or whatever happens to appear),

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There are a lot of things I want to do. I want to create and build and make and write.

And then, of course, there are other things that I just have to do, like bookkeeping and responding to emails.

Sometimes, it all gets to be too much. There are too many things to do! I need to figure out where to start! I get paralyzed by the sheer enormity of it... See more

journaling only works if you write faster than you can lie to yourself