This is an excellent comment that I received:
This story offers an insight into a problem that many people have and that seems intractable to them. There are things they need to do but they simply have no energy to do them. They berate themselves for being lazy procrastinators but the energy is simply physically not there. Plus, nothing eats energy like feelings of guilt, so feeling bad about not doing what you need to do leads to you feeling even more drained. It’s a vicious circle.
The quoted story is important because it taps into the place from which energy comes. It’s like with money. You can make savings, you can reduce your budget. But there is another solution which is to raise your income. The good news is that with energy it’s a lot easier to increase the supply than with income. Income is something other people must give you. Energy is already inside yourself. What you need is to liberate it, and this story is a perfect primer on how to do that. I’m going to refer to its author as “he” in hopes that somebody who has the intelligence to learn Latin won’t mind if I happen to “misgender” him.
The author of the story is the kind of person who learns Latin. A smart, effective person with a highly organized brain. He was always that person. He was a person who learns Latin BEFORE he did his first lesson. But he wasn’t letting himself live the life of his authentic self. Instead, he was trying to force himself into the persona that is the opposite of who he actually is. And his whole body and mind were resisting. That’s where the energy went. There was a split at the core of his self between who he was and how he was trying to force himself to live. The energy went into suturing that split. Daily, again and again. This must have felt exhausting.
The moment he redirected the libidinal power (meaning, the power of desire) away from splitting himself in two and then trying to hold the parts of the split self together, the energy became liberated.
Do you know why a neoliberal subject is always exhausted? Always guzzling energy drinks? Gulping down huge amounts of coffee just to wake up and still never feels truly energetic? This is why. A neoliberal self lives with a profound rift at the core of his being. He’s always the manager and the employee. The prison guard and the prisoner. The punisher and the punished. It’s a daily battle that eats you alive.
But when you step out of this game and let yourself be who you already are, all that energy is now free to do all sorts of things. If you no longer have to battle yourself, you have everything you need to battle the circumstances of your life that you might want to overcome.
If you are an academic who wants to publish a lot, you need to become that person BEFORE you publish a single word. And then you’ll start shooting out publications like a machine gun. I should know because that’s how I did it. You don’t arrive at being who you are as a reward for “good” behavior. You are already that person. By placing the being-who-you-are at a remove from yourself and making it conditional on fulfilling a list of obligations, you are denying your real self. You split it up and then wonder why it hurts. You can’t run a marathon with your feet tied. Stop tying your feet and then hating yourself for falling down at the very beginning of the run.
We all live in the same neoliberal reality that sets us up to feel drained and unhappy with ourselves. And it’s very hard to ditch this mentality because it’s everywhere. But once you do, like the author of the story did, you suddenly discover vast, untapped reserves of energy inside yourself that are finally going to work for you and not against you.
Thank you, anonymous reader, for this important, enlightening story. You have helped many people by sharing it.
Clarissa's Blog 
Thank you.
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This is true. I recently started Chinese. Time and energy to this are taken from non-productive or energy draining activities. Time is finite. The end result is more time and more energy.
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I had no idea there were so many polyglots on this blog. This is amazing.
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This is so true. Whenever I feel stuck, it’s because I won’t let myself do what I want as I feel like I need to force myself to do what I should. The stalemate is always, ALWAYS resolved by my allowing myself to do what I’m dying to do anyway.
I started writing fiction in 2017 and never looked back. Everything in my life has improved since I allowed myself to seriously indulge the creative impulse and not funnel everything into job and family, which I thought I was supposed to do and it was making me miserable.
I call this the “cake before dinner” approach to life. If you permit yourself to do the stuff you’re dying to do first (to the extent possible) before doing anything that feels like drudgery, then the drudgery doesn’t feel like drudgery at all, but rather a welcome respite from your obsession. When I finish a book manuscript or some other project that I really wanted to, getting to clean the house or cook dinner or do the dishes or do some boring work stuff is actually a welcome break from the intensity. And let’s not even mention how much more fun I am to be around when I’m not torturing myself.
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I was going to use writers as an example because that’s exactly it. You are a writer first and then you either let yourself live as one or not.
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I’m going to try to take this approach as much as I can going forward.
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Funnily enough I put this off for several weeks partially because I thought I should focus more on French. But all that did was make me resentful of the French language. I’m doing just as much French now as I was the two weeks before starting Latin, and now without a resentful and sullen attitude towards it.
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Do you have any practical advice for how to do maximize this behavior in the context of non-negotiable responsibilities eg caring for kids and elderly parents? How do you let yourself be who you are while maintaining contact with family members who really don’t like and don’t want to see the “person you really are”
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I can offer some suggestions based on my experiences and philosophy, and likely they won’t all work for you, but perhaps a thing or two might give you some plausible ideas.
I’ve got around 80 short stories published in various magazines and anthologies, and I’ve got two novels out and a novella series out to be soon (all traditionally published). However, I write all of my fiction under pen names (two pen names for the two very distinct genre classes) and NO ONE in real life other than my husband, kids (now teens and adult), and only one friend knows I write fiction. I am not in much contact with my parents or sibling, but I am definitely not sharing something as important to me as my writing with these people who I know don’t get me or particularly like me.
My attitude is that the access to one’s inner sanctum—to one’s secrets, fears, and things that give one true joy, such as the inner wellsprings of creativity—is a privilege that must be earned and can easily be revoked if people turn out to be untrustworthy. Anyone whom you consider negative or small-minded, anyone who wouldn’t be supportive or encouraging or life-giving is not entitled to have access to all of you. Yes, this might mean your parents, siblings, even partner and kids. If someone isn’t on your side, they get relegated to one of the outer circles, where coworkers and acquaintances dwell, and don’t get to mess with your gooey center.
As for practical advice, it will really depend on how old the kids are, how much energy you have in general, what your elder care responsibilities are. When you’re squeezed between young kids and elder care, it can be extremely hard to carve out some time for what you really crave. I am here to say you don’t need anyone’s permission to carve out the time; you do not owe 100% of your time and energy to the people for whom you care; you are not their slave. I know they might make you feel like you owe them your all, but you do not. You are your own person, and no amount of enmeshment with others means you lose yourself completely. Bottom line: Don’t ask for permission to do what feeds your soul. Now, as to the logistics. If you can get up at 5 am (popular among writers on Twitter) to do your creative thing, do it. If you can do it over lunch break at work, do it. If you can stay an hour or two longer at work or after everyone’s gone to sleep, do it. If you can steal some hours on the weekend, do it. With people who wouldn’t be supportive of your endeavors, you have my permission to absolutely lie about what you do in those stolen moments and who you really are. Remember, access to your inner sanctum is a privilege. Be merciless about protecting it from those who would desecrate it, even if they’re related to you by blood.
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This is an extraordinary achievement for you as a writer. Really, really cool. I’m so happy for you.
Great suggestions, too.
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Thank you! It’s been a learning curve, but very fun. I wrote and published short stories for five years before I said, “OK, I can try my hand at a novel now.” The transition from writing short stories to novels is quite interesting from multiple angles: organization, motivation, growing one’s craft, a whole new level of self-editing, the (mostly disheartening) process of querying… But once you’ve got people picking up your books and gushing how they liked this part or that, how they related to the characters, how they stayed up all night to finish… It’s all been pretty amazing!
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Can’t advise on how to make it happen– still figuring it out. But it’s really important to do it, because with your kids especially: you will not be a great parent, if you feel like your kids are taking up all your time, and you can no longer do anything you love. Been there done that, trying to climb out of the hole now, and seriously, even with just the most feeble efforts to carve out time and do some of the creative stuff I used to do: I’m nicer to my kids and they are responding well to it. They don’t even have to know or see what I’m working on. The important thing is that *sometimes I’m not available* and I’m a less resentful person. It’s better if my whole life *isn’t* devoted to them. That’s smothery and we get sick of each other.
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