The one I didn't enter
On the difference between missing something and choosing not to meet it.
"I used to think the all-nighter was commitment.
Mostly it was me refusing to admit I only had so much to give."
A couple of weeks ago, I let a very important deadline go. I was surprised at how effortless that decision came to be, and how guiltless I felt.
It was a writing competition, and it had been in the calendar and worked towards for months, especially in recent weeks. Placing in that competition would have meant a lot: publication, audience, prize money in the thousands. It would also come with sponsored time and space to write, and someone further along the publishing road reading my work and telling me what they saw in it. Those are the things that a writer working towards book publishing really wants and can be propelled forward through.
The deadline was worth something, and I knew it.
In those weeks beforehand, the writing schedule got reordered twice. Other life matters meant I slipped a day, then slipped another day.
Just as I was back on track, something else arrived that needed my full focus, and I tried to do both, still. For a few days I held onto the idea that I’d still make it. Determination to pursue a dream will do that.
But I couldn’t do both, and I eventually recognised that once I looked at the week ahead through logic, instead of through hope.
In previous years, this is the point where the heroics would kick in and I’d sacrifice to achieve something.
An all-nighter. Other 2am wake-ups and rewrites that feel like devotion in the moment, and torture the next day. I used to be really good at seeing a genuine shortage of hours and turning it into a test of character, producing something that wasn’t what I wanted it to be anyway, and turning up to everything else with nothing left.
But this time, once I got there, the whole decision-making window was about ten minutes. I looked at what was in front of me, worked out what I needed to properly focus on, and let the writing competition entry go. I made no plan to make it up and no promise about next year. What I settled on was pretty simple: this doesn’t fit, and pretending otherwise will cost more than the entry is worth.
I discovered that the perspective we choose when this happens is important.
Missing something is passive; it happens to us. The deadline went by, the week got away, the thing didn’t happen, and nobody had to decide anything.
Choosing not to meet something is a decision, and it’s the one most of us will do almost anything to avoid if we can, because a choice belongs to us in a way a slip doesn’t. We own it and choose it, rather than experience it.
I don’t want to make this sound easy, because it wasn’t.
Choosing to let this writing competition go was disappointing, and it still is. The opportunity was real and the piece I was working on was going somewhere… I loved it, and it’s there for me to pick back up another time.
What changed for me this time, unexpectedly, is what I did with the disappointment.
The old version of me would have turned it into evidence:
“Not organised enough. Not serious enough. Would have found the hours if I really wanted it. Look at all the people producing more with less.”
That conversation used to run for two or three days, and it never once produced a submitted entry. All it did was add a second hurt on top of the first one.
This time I let it just be disappointing, and I felt it for what it was: I wanted something, I couldn’t have it, and that’s sad. Sad is enough. Judging and condemning myself wouldn’t help me.
I’m not going to call this growth. Some of it might just be that at 44, I don’t have the energy the heroic version runs on, and saying that’s wisdom might be overstating what is just recognition.
What I needed to focus on got my attention and effort and time, and I’m glad I chose that.
Alongside that, the disappointment is still there. Smaller than it would have been, but it’s allowed to be there, too.
Three things to try.
Say it plainly.
When something doesn’t get done, say to yourself, “There was only so much of me available, and this didn’t fit.”
Look at what the all-nighter actually produced.
Think back to the last time we pushed through a night to make something happen. Look honestly at what came out of it, and at the two or three days afterwards. Rarely satisfying.
Let it just be disappointing.
When we lose something we wanted, acknowledge that. We wanted a thing, we couldn’t have it, and that’s sad. Nothing else needs adding.
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