Every Monday morning I wake up with a challenge: fill a blank white page with a story to share with you, my reader, by Thursday morning.

But it can’t just be any story. It must be interesting and engaging and end with an insightful lesson. And I strive each week to show improvements in my writing. Some weeks, I have an idea and the story flows effortlessly from my fingertips. Other weeks, like this one, I sit fidgeting at my computer for hours, cracking my knuckles, pulling on my chin, and praying for something interesting to find me.

This Monday, I scrolled my notes and photos and highlights over and over in search of ideas. I jotted bullet points to outline eight different essays. I even started drafting three of them but they all felt lifeless. By late morning, I had spent four fruitless hours on my laptop.

I started to Go Negative.

Going Negative is a term my brother and I use when our day starts to spiral downwards. When you Go Negative, it feels like you’re wearing grayscale glasses. Everything in your life, even the things you’re normally excited about, starts to look like oatmeal: bland and not getting better any time soon.

Usually, a run, lift, and cold water plunge after a tough morning resets my brain to tackle the afternoon. But it poured rain all Monday morning. And while I could’ve gone for a run in the downpour, I lacked my usual drive to run no matter the weather. I worked out inside instead then frolicked down to the lake under storming rainclouds and jumped in.

Feeling slightly refreshed, but still fixated on my problem with a furrowed brow and downcast gaze, I made tea and returned to my laptop. Another hour passed and I had more scribblings and nuggets of ideas but still nothing good enough.

Frustrated and defeated, my mental state plummeted.

~~~

I’m an optimistic person. It’s so rare for me to Go Negative that when I do, it brings the energy level of everyone in my home down to that of a funeral parlour.

But when I have a problem that I don’t yet have a solution to—like an unwritten essay I need to publish by Thursday—every thought that crosses my mind is a stab at a solution. Unsolved problems consume me.

And after spending a few hours Going Negative, I struggle to pull myself out. Like a cross-country skier with both feet locked in two deep grooves, I sink into a rut that feels impossible to escape.

It’s as if I can’t overcome my own petty little ego: You were mad a minute ago, so stay mad! Show that writer’s block he’s not welcome here. And if I quickly turn my mood around, I fear the questioning eyes of others would deem me erratic and inconsistent: He was glum a moment ago and now he’s smiling and cracking jokes… is this guy going to filet me in my sleep?

So I become a prisoner to my emotions.

~~~

Late into the afternoon still with nothing on the page, I leaned back in my stained elephant-grey office chair, the one I adopted from a rubbish pile in the backyard of my second-year university home on move-in day, and stared out the window at a drooping cedar. That tree is home to squirrels, robins, crows, and bugs, all doing what they are programmed to do.

The unquestioning squirrel doesn’t know where he’ll find food next or how he’ll flee the dagger-like talons of a hawk but he will do both as the need arises. The unknowing cedar drops the needles she no longer needs at the exact right time. The uncertain me became increasingly negative with each passing moment I wasn’t getting visibly closer to my goal.

I started to think: I didn’t Go Negative because of the essay I hadn’t yet written. But because I lose faith in my ability to do the things I’m good at unless I’m actively and successfully engaging in them. Doubt quickly fills the gap of expedient results and drains the trust that what I need to succeed is already within me.

The animals and the trees around me don’t think about living, they live. They don’t get stuck in the past or project into the future, they do what needs to be done at the moment it requires doing.

The same natural wisdom that lives in them flows through me. That part of me knows what I need and how to get it. But to tap into it, I have to loosen my grip and trust that, like the cedar dropping its needles, what I need will come to me at the moment I need it.

Thanks for reading!

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And a special thank you to Jeremy Scharf for your generous and invaluable edits on the initial drafts of this essay.

Lots of love,

Jack

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