Limited or Limitless? Where’s the line?

Can we break through barriers with nothing but a positive mindset?

“It’s almost impossible to be honest and boring at the same time”

- Julia Cameron, The Right to Write

My word of the month for March was going to be HONESTY, but another word kept popping into my mind which I decided was worth exploring (instead of sticking to some arbitrary word I’d picked out months ago).

So my new word for March is LIMITS. I’ll get into that in a moment, but first a reflection on the month as a whole.

It started well; I was looking after my mind and body and my routine was working. Then, splat, my chronic illnesses got the better of me and everything else fell over.

All because of my bloody birthday.

At some point or another throughout a life, birthdays don’t hold the same sparkle. I don’t hate birthdays, but I don’t love them either. They’re meh. A perfect birthday in my forties is to be left alone with a really good book, endless lattes and snacks, and snuggles with my dog. And that’s almost exactly what happened. But even so, my health went to poop.

It wasn’t really about my birthday, if I’m honest. The timing was just a bit coincidental. Julia Cameron, author of The Artist’s Way, would say it was synchronicity, perhaps.

The week before was spent waiting on a funding decision — funding that would (if awarded) release me from the stress and identity-killing process of claiming disability benefits. It would give me much needed time and space to work on my writing without constantly berating myself for not being able to do a normal job or normal things.

The funding was declined, and I got an email telling me as much a few days before my birthday. I was gutted, but not surprised. It’s difficult to get funding as a creative writer, but it was my second attempt which means I can’t apply again for a few years. That door has closed for now, so I need to find other ways to accept my reality.

The day itself was actually very lovely. Some family came to see me across the weekend, with gifts and flowers and book tokens. But my mental and physical health hadn’t been good for a couple of weeks so I’d been concentrating on simply existing and getting up in the mornings. My dog, Pan, continues to need twice daily walks which is probably the only reason I’m not curled in a ball in the corner of my bedroom right now. Exercise is crucial, but 15 year old me didn’t listen to her teachers, so I’m only learning it now, with Pan’s encouragement.

Back to my word for March — LIMITS. I couldn’t work out for a while what my brain was trying to tell me. Was it about being limited due to my reduced abilities? My health issues, societal expectations, or changing limits as I progress through life stages? Or was it more about being limitless, ignoring all the bullshit that lands on our path and doing things we love anyway? Maybe it’s the balance between those two opposing mindsets.

Some days I feel completely limited, like the most I can hope to achieve is to get out of bed and eat. Other days, I feel limitless, like I could capture the moon. My abilities are shaped by my hormonal cycle, which is synthetic because of early menopause, and supplemented heavily by medication. But it makes sense, that some weeks I feel like I can fly, and others I can barely look out of the window.

I posted on LinkedIn earlier in the month about aphantasia, having recently discovered that when asked to ‘picture’ something in one’s mind’s eye, other people actually see that object. This blew my mind; I’ve never been able to conjure mental images.

My mind’s eye is a grey canvas, with no images forming there. As a reader, I’ve often wondered at the fact I don’t build pictures of the story in my head like others describe. When I watch a film or TV adaptation of something I’ve read, it’s never wrong for me because I didn’t imagine it in the first place (it can still be bad, but not wrong). I skip over visually descriptive paragraphs in a story because it adds nothing for me. It’s never affected my enjoyment of a good novel and now I can’t help but wonder why. Surely other people enjoy fiction infinitely more than I do — have I been missing out all this time?

As I move from reader to writer in the world of fiction — a world, by definition, created from made up things — I ask myself how I can possibly succeed when I can’t summon images in my head. If I can’t see what I’m writing about, how can I do a good job of describing it to my reader? And yet, I feel a story unfold, and I put it to the page and it’s there, in black and white. Is it lacking? I have no idea. Maybe I need to find someone with the opposite of aphantasia, someone who can see the most vivid and realistic mental images, and ask them if my stories work.

The first time I got paid for my writing, I felt like a superstar. I pitched a magazine aimed at readers about my online book club for childless people and was paid £200 for a double page spread. My face — but more importantly, my words — featured in this magazine which sadly only came out in the USA so I never got my hands on a physical copy. It was a watershed moment in my life, the realisation that I could make money from doing this thing I loved. In that moment, I felt limitless — the world was my oyster. But once the adrenaline wore off, I was back in my mindset of limitations. Back to feeling inadequate and like I must follow the well-trodden narrative of everyone around me — we work, we hate our jobs, but we get a regular amount of money paid into the bank each month which pays for the things we need to survive. The grind. It never suited me, but I had no idea there were other options available. I do, now.

It’s almost April and with that comes spring and the clocks changing here in the UK. Longer evenings are coming. My garden is due some love over the next few weeks so that’s where you’ll find me.

Some days I’ll be limited by the things my body no longer does. Other days I’ll feel limitless; ready and able to face the world and put my writing out there for others to find. Today was one of the good days, so I hit publish. Tomorrow might be difficult. And the waves will continue, and that’s ok.

My message to anyone living with chronic illnesses, and to myself I suppose, is this: don’t feel guilty for the good days. We don’t get them as often as other people, so it’s perfectly acceptable (and encouraged) to enjoy them to the best of your ability.

Thanks for reading, connect with me here.

This story was originally published on Substack and is cross-posted here for a wider audience. View the original post here.