#violet pollux

I’m used to having deadlines one right after the other, and sometimes they’re so demanding that I start to think I won’t finish on time, that I won’t make it. Pressure is something that can motivate you to keep on the track, but sometimes, the anxiety it generates could actually take you to the opposite direction.

My secret for not letting the pressure of the deadline kill me and my dreams and my mental health? I ignore it. I forget about it. I act as if it didn’t exist at all.

I write because I love writing. I study because I love studying. I play an instrument because I love playing it, and the point is that that love should be the motivation to do those things, not a deadline. I mean, a deadline is awesome, it keeps you writing… but sometimes you focus on it so hard that you forget that the main reason why you’re doing this is because you love it.

NaNoWriMo 2016 was the hardest for me. I was at half of the month and didn’t even have 10K words written–I was about to lose my mind! I thought I couldn’t make it, but then I just sat down and wrote because that’s what I love doing, not because I was putting pressure on myself to get it done. In that weekend I wrote about 12K words. Why did I write that many words in so little time but didn’t in the days before? Because in that weekend I only focused on two things:

I was writing because I loved it, not because of anything else.

I only cared about the next word, the next paragraph, the next scene, the next chapter.

Big things are done by little tiny steps, and those are the ones we should focus on. One thing that NaNoWriMo has taught me is this: If you focus on the next small step you have to do, and just forget about the rest of the world in the meantime–magic happens, and you finish on time.

I know how horrible it is to fight anxiety and stress and to constantly be under pressure–I live that daily. But, do you want to know what I discovered recently? Most of times I don’t succeed on things, it’s because of… well, me.

Sometimes I’m the one who stands in the way to my own success, and now that I’m aware of it, I’ll try not to do it. I hope you try not to do it, too, if that was your case.

And, if you asked me for advice on writing, or life itself, I’d tell you this:

Don’t let yourself be the stone on your own road. Don’t let yourself be the reason why you don’t succeed. Don’t let your thoughts bring you down, because you’re stronger than you think–and trust me, even if you can’t see the light at the end of the tunnel, you can do this, you will do it, because you’re capable of that and so much more.

Violet Pollux is a poet, writer, musician–or simply an artist. They live in Venezuela, where they were born and currently study Medicine and Educational Learning Disabilities. They dream of being an LGBTQ+ activist someday. Violet writes mostly in Spanish, their mother tongue, but also writes in English. You can find them on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook, and you can follow their blogs: they have one in English and one in Spanish.