Day 44: Feels impossible.

Day 44.  I wake with a start.  Did I forget to put the trashcans out on the curb?  I stumble out of bed and go check.  I must have done it last night because they’re there but it doesn’t matter because the garbage truck hasn’t come yet anyway.  Whew.  But the panicked energy doesn’t budge from my body.  I’m so anxious to get started on my Avid work I quickly eat leftovers for breakfast, do the dishes, and psych myself up for maximum productivity.  I only check emails on my iPhone.  I don’t dare fire up my laptop for fear I’ll get pulled into full frontal Facebook.  Talk about a time suck.   A friend emails he’s having a crisis.  I write him back in my best comforting, supportive tone and tell him talking to him later will be my reward for finishing a scene.  Another friend emails asking why she hasn’t seen any posts from me for a couple days.

I toggle back and forth between the three different scenes in question.  I have set the goal to complete them before the end of this coming weekend.  Throughout the day I power through a box of gluten free pecan shortbread cookies—yes, I went to Whole Foods again but there’s hope for me.  The Valentine’s Day Fairy sent me a gift card to Trader Joe’s!  Whole Foods be damned!  I eat two more cookies out of the walnut raisin gluten free sugar free cookies box and I ingest an abnormal amount of my childhood favorite which also happens to be all I have in the fridge; cucumber sandwiches—yes, on Udi’s gluten free bread.  It’s a day of highs and lows and everything in between.  At the height of my green tea buzz I’m so confident I’m brilliant I shout for joy and do a victory jig at the interview string out I’ve just done.  When my fruit juice sweetened cookie high wears off, I weep from my incompetence and my snail’s pace.  Even though I haven’t finished a scene, I convince myself I must call my friend in crisis because he needs me not because I’m trying to procrastinate.  Unfortunately, his crisis is over by then.  He tells me to go back to work.  I sneak in an iPhone visit to Facebook and knock off a few likes and comments before shutting my phone off so it won’t tempt me.  I get back to it.

After 10 straight hours editing I still don’t have a complete scene bin ready for Dan the Amazing Editor Man and it still feels impossible.  Just because it feels impossible does that mean it really is?  Yes.  No.  Maybe.  I’ll let you know Sunday night at 11:59pm.  Oh crap.  I just realized I never brought the trashcans back in from the street.  This isn’t some convenient wrap up or tie to the opening paragraph, the cans are still at the f*#@ing curb.  Dragging two trashcans down the driveway at almost midnight in my pajamas really feels impossible right now.  But it’s not.

Until tomorrow, create from what you have…even if it feels impossible.

Kelli Joan Bennett is a filmmaker, actress, writer, entrepreneur, advocate for creative thinking and Founder and Editor-in-Chief of Think Outside The Box Inside The Box Media.

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