Imagine you hear there’s a chest of gold buried somewhere in a vast and uninhabited land. You have it under good authority the land is orderly and peaceful, where the rules are so understood, there are entire degree programs devoted to finding this gold.
Then you hear there are people who’ve claimed some of the gold for themselves (who insist there’s enough gold for everyone, which seems reasonable, since so many of them have it), and they’re all drawing maps to get there.
But when you follow the map, you realize the gold isn’t where they said it would be. And you don’t know why the map won’t work.
Everyone says, this is the map. Follow this map. Even though some of the people telling you to follow the map also haven’t been able to use the map, but you don’t know that.
Then you realize there are a hundred maps, and every map is different, and you don’t know enough about the land that contains the gold to know if you’re picking the right map or not.
Plus, the more journeys you select, the more you realize that all these rules you thought governed the land don’t actually govern anything. Not only is it a free-for-all, but you’re not even sure there’s gold there anymore. You keep hearing about it, but you can’t get to it yourself.
And we wonder why so many writers are overwhelmed, burned out, and exhausted.
Because the secret is, we’re all writing our own map anyway. That’s how the gold-finders found their gold. They forged their way out of the wilderness. They can’t forge your way. You have to forge your own way, take your own chances, make your own mistakes, learn from them, and keep moving forward.
Some of us need to stop hanging out in map-seeking spaces, turn off all the voices, and have more peace. We think finding the gold will bring us peace, but really… it just makes more noise.
Here’s why I posted this… many of us are in this state of overwhelm, but it’s primarily because we’re assuming the maps work instead of realizing that we have to hew the path out of the wilderness ourselves (maps can be great tools, but they are not The Way). And taking that kind of agency and committing to that kind of resilience is a lot. No one making maps is to blame for this situation. This is on me, as a decision-maker, to know myself. This is my journey.
– Becca