I almost let fear win last Monday. It looks like an issue of Sunday| Mag I’ve been counting on won’t be happening, and I had nothing for October 1st.
The thing you need to know about Sunday| Mag is this: each month, I have to come up with twelve unique article ideas. Then I have to assign those articles to twelve different writers, and give them two weeks to finish the project. Then I assign twelve articles to artists to design graphics…with a two week deadline for each of those too. I get each article, once they’re turned in, edited by a team of four editors. Then I have to lay them out and prepare everything to publish.
You don’t need to do the math to realize that pretty much takes up the whole month. Then when you add in people taking a couple of days to respond to my request, saying no, or just not responding at all…it can be overwhelming to produce the issue. Especially if I’m running behind.
So on Monday, when I realized how late it was in the month and my plans were falling through, I started to stress. I found myself spending time worrying about making it all happen instead of actually doing anything.
That’s the problem with stress and fear. They trick you into thinking that you’re actually doing something by worrying. You waste your time analyzing all the ways you can fail instead of actually fixing the problem.
I’m proud to say, at least this time, I beat fear. I set to work and started strategizing what I should do to make October happen. I came up with twelve article ideas, surprisingly quickly, and I assigned them all. (That process normally takes me a full week.)
I’m catching up instead of fearing. It’s a great feeling.
Encouraging story.
Fear can get the best of us if we allow it. I identify with a lot of this story – thanks for the post.