The Murky Middle

So I call it the murky middle. And I learned at some point that to value and get excited when that happens. It's a feeling like I feel it in my body when I'm in that space. I feel anxious. I feel a little bit annoyed. I'm frustrated. I can't mentally figure my way out of it, which is infuriating. I want to try 5,000 possibilities in my head, and there has to be one of them here, and I can't figure it out. And, you know, and so that struggle, that murky middle comes up, and then it's what you do in that moment. And how can you switch the feeling from, you know, beating yourself up? I think often I see it in kids, I see it in adults and as well, we just get to that murky middle. It gets hard, it gets messy. We don't know our way out. And so then we start saying all these horrible things about ourselves, right? Like, oh, you're not experienced enough. You don't know what you're doing. Like, you know, just the voice of give up is just right there. And it would be so easy just to just go, yeah, I'm done. Throw all that junk I collected. Just throw it away. I'm going to start something new. This isn't my thing. But I think at some point I learned that that means you're onto something incredible. You just got to give it a little more time. It means that you actually hit on something that doesn't have an easy, logical answer. It's not Googleable. It's something you have to puzzle out. And that might mean, yeah, you just let it sit on the back burner for, you know, six months, and then all of a sudden, like, I know what to do. You know, you can busy yourself. I mean, I have multiple projects going on right now. I don't assume that I'm just going to have one project going at any one time. I think there's something about keeping yourself moving so that the inertia doesn't set in and you just can't move, you know? So, yeah, I might get stuck on where to go with the graphic novel, and I go sit down and play the piano for half an hour. And I might feel frustrated because I screw up at the piano, because I haven't practiced, and my head wants to beat me up, and I just go, yeah, but you're here right now, so let's practice, you know, or it might be get up and go for a walk and just go talk to a friend or listen to a podcast. Like, get something else in your head. And because that puzzle is still there and you're thinking about it, it's going to seep into the project, and you're gonna find your solution. So, yeah, murky middle, that's where it's that. That's when you know you're onto the good stuff.