The image is of a sailing vessel tacking into the wind. If the captain and crew wish to get to point A, and the wind is coming from point A, they cannot sail directly to their destination. They have to tack back and forth in a zig-zag fashion to get there. As a metaphor, this is my creative process.

To move forward and get to my destination I must tack back and forth between two points. These two points are Confidence and Doubt. If I have too much confidence, and I hold that course for too long, I go wildly off course. Likewise when I have too much doubt. And forget about trying to force myself to have confidence; that is just a recipe for depression. A nice steady back and forth wins the day.

Over the years I have learned how to manage this process with some success. Not so much with confidence… I find no need to manage confidence. It is doubt and the transition from doubt to confidence which are the most important parts of the process. In my world, doubt is expressed by the act of reorganization. The prime target for this abuse is my computer.

I have been a Linux user for about two decades, and I know I am tacking back into doubt when I have a strong desire to try other distributions on my computer. This is a slightly tedious process. Especially to do over and over again. Once I settle on another distribution, I try other programs that I think might help my writing process. The test of these programs is me using them to reorganizing my notes. Over and over again with each new program. I rarely find something new or interesting in my old notes from the reprocessing, but that never seems to be the point.

I cannot say how it happens, but at some point the energy shifts and I start having new ideas fall into my mind like ripe apples falling from a tree. Generally, at this point I realize that my old system was just fine, and I go back to that to start writing again.

In the past I was young and stupid. When I tried new distributions I backed up my info and erased my whole hard drive with each attempt. This meant that when the period of doubt was over and I was full of energy and ideas, I had to first reinstall and set up my old system to where I liked it before I could get moving forward again. This burned off much of the good energy before I was able to get anything done.

I have since learned to partition my hard drive so I can go through the process without damaging my original setup. The transition back is quick and painless. And no… there is no not going through the process. My current impression of it is that I need to distract myself so my brain can load up on new stuff for me to “discover”. (Whether this is true or not is irrelevant.)

There are many who do not live the creative life, so they do not understand the value of tacking back and forth between confidence and doubt. They chastise you for not being as productive as they think you should be. They will insist you force yourself to be more confident, which leads you into depression. Then, after you are depressed, they insist that you address your depression their way. This is a process for gaining dominance over you. Politely ignore these people… they do not know what they are doing, or even how abusive they really are.