You want to write an article, freelance, but don't heave a regular gig anywhere. So you need to put together something really strong in order to pitch it... but without having a publication backing you, potential sources are less likely to take the time to help you.
You finally get the time, and the space, and, hell, the permission to just sit down and write.
And nothing happens.
You stare at your list of prompts and to-dos, and you just can't care about them. This one is stupid. That one is hard.
You open up something you got halfway through, and you can't for the life of you remember where you were going with it.
You get defeatist. No one is going to read it anyway. No one reads it now. Why bother?
You get nervous. The plan was to work on your writing, and then do something else. Something else? Not getting done. Because you can't write.
You can't write.
And hell, if you could do anything else -- if you wanted to do anything else -- well, you'd have a day job like a normal person, wouldn't you?
Self-worth comes into question. The Depression monster -- which already finds you to be delectable prey -- starts creeping around the edges of your territory. You can see it, hear it, smell its breath. Its teeth are sharp, and wet; its mouth is watering.
It will devour you if you don't fight.
Better to whine about having to fight than to be eaten for not fighting, you decide.
So you hammer out the kind of essay writers have been writing when they lack better ideas, pretty much since there have been both writers and ideas.
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