Down the Rabbit Hole (again)

Right then. This is my first go at this, so bear with me.

I’ve lost the word already. You know the one. Not “blog” — the other thing. Newsletter. That’s it. See? Off we go. Anyway, let’s crack on.

My problem has always been — especially at this time of year, from the end of November through to February — is I get sucked straight down the rabbit hole. Procrastination. Bloody hell, I’m good at it. Olympic level, if they gave out medals.

I’ll start the day with what feel like cracking ideas. Proper ones. The sort where you think, yeah, this is it, today’s the day. Then I’ll just check something — one thing — on social media. And that’s it. Brain’s gone. Off on a tangent. Five minutes turns into an hour, and whatever I was thinking about has completely legged it.

The really annoying bit is that something always goes a bit wonky. I’ll forget what I was doing, lose the thread, or suddenly feel like the whole idea was rubbish anyway. And then, by the end of the day, you sit there thinking: What have I actually done? Not much, if we’re honest. Cue beating yourself up. Lovely.

Oddly enough, I’ve noticed I work much better early in the morning. It’s just gone 6am as I’m writing this. At that hour, the world’s quiet, my head’s quieter, and there’s less chance of disappearing down some digital rabbit hole looking at things I don’t even care about.

So here’s the small sketching-related thing I’ve learned from all this.

If you’re struggling to start — or keep going — don’t aim for a “proper session”. Just do ten minutes. One sketch. One small thing. No scrolling beforehand. No grand plans. Treat it like nicking a quick drawing before your brain realises what you’re up to.

Some days, that ten minutes turns into more. Some days it doesn’t. Either way, you’ve done something — and that counts for more than another day disappearing into thin air.

Right. That’s enough rabbit-hole talk for one morning. I’m off to do a small sketch while my brain’s still behaving itself. If it all goes pear-shaped, I’ll tell you about that next time.