Dear Wizard,

I have a chronic pain disorder and that makes my ability to sit down and write difficult. I am always in pain. I often loose focus and executive function due to the levels of pain I experience. Do you have any suggestions for motivating myself to sit down and write?

How do I accomplish anything when it feels like doing so is impossible? I feel so stuck. What can I do to move forward?

Help! Please, Wizard.

Sincerely,
Chronically Writing (mey/ mer)

Dear Writing,

Life is full of frustrating moments and limitations of a corporeal body! I know you feel that you are stuck, but perhaps you have expectations of yourself that are no longer healthy? Or no longer what you can do.

Thus, my first suggestion is this, don’t feel like you have to push yourself too hard. If you are doing spell work, then break it down into smaller pieces. You can set up the materials for the spell the night before. Then the next day, you can perform the spell. And on the day after that you can clean up your work space and cleanse it. Yes, this takes longer than doing it all in one day. However, if feels better to finish a spell than not to do one at all.

Or if you are writing a spell in your grimoire, don’t feel that you need to write the spell in one sitting. Take an hour glass and use that. I have hour glasses that tick to fifteen minutes and sometimes use those at a time. It helps me to feel like I have accomplished something, even if that something feels like a grain of sand.

But those grains of sand keep ticking— filling up the hourglass— reminding me that each grain is important in its own way.
Each grain of sand gets you closer to the final goal. I know that breaking it down into smaller pieces can often feel frustrating and annoying — especially if you didn’t have to do it that way before— but you are in the corporeal form that you are in now. Not the one you had before.

And it will amaze you that after a while taking a goal grain by grain helps you to accomplish those goals. And when you have reached your goal, you will feel that sense of accomplishment that you are longing for. You may even feel a sense of accomplishment along the way— for each grain completed— on the way to the large hourglass of sand grains.

It can be difficult, trying a new approach, but please don’t give up. I understand the frustrations. If one approach is not working for you, then try another, until you find the configuration that works for you. It is challenging, but it is possible, to find a way to meet your goals grain by grain and bit by bit.

Sincerely,
A Wizard