Overlooking the Simple Solution

“I just can’t keep up with it. It’s so fucking stupid, but it’s overwhelming me. I don’t know how to deal with this much laundry. I can’t keep myself focused long enough to fold that many pieces of clothing at once. There’s just… there’s so much. I can’t do it, and now there’s laundry piled everywhere. I don’t like living in a mess, but I can’t make it stop. I can fold a load, but then there’s just another one waiting—I’m rambling. I’m rambling about laundry. Jesus fucking Christ. I’m sorry.”

My therapist puts his pen down and cocks his head to the side as he looks at me. He almost looks a little baffled. He’s hiding it well beneath a mask of neutrality, but I saw it in the very brief raising of his brows. He might be the professional people-reader, but I've been working with him long enough now that I have gotten pretty good at reading him too.

I fidget nervously in my seat. I’ve been seeing this therapist for two years now. We know each other. He’s used to my rants about topics that aren’t seemingly important. Just like this. It’s laundry. It’s just laundry. Why does this matter? I’m in therapy. Shouldn’t I be talking about like, my childhood? My past traumas? Why am I talking about laundry?

“Are you doing just your laundry?” he asks.

“No.” I shake my head before telling him that I also have to do the laundry for my (then) boyfriend and his two children.

“How often do you do laundry?”

“Once a week.” I shrug my shoulders. “Sunday is laundry day.”

“You do a week's worth of laundry for four people once a week? And it’s overwhelming?”

I nod my head. “Yeah, but like, I’ll get over it. I shouldn’t have brought it up. I think maybe I’m just upset that I don’t really get any help with the household stuff.”

Charles shakes his head. “I’d like to discuss that in more detail, but first, can I make a suggestion?”

“Is it that I should join a nudist colony?”

“No. Do the laundry more.”

“Do it more?”

“Do it more. The amount of clothing won’t change, but you won’t be tackling so much at once. Do half of it on, I don’t know, Wednesdays? Do Wednesdays and Sundays.”

Okay. Why am I writing out a conversation that I had with my therapist in 2018 about doing laundry?

I look back on this conversation often. I did take his advice and yes, it made my laundry significantly easier to manage, but it was more than that. I was furious with myself afterward. That was such an obvious idea. It was the most obvious one, I think. So why didn’t I think of it?

This was around the time that I realized that, perhaps, I am an overthinker. When I said as much, Charles just laughed at me. Apparently, he knew this about me. Apparently, it was obvious. Apparently, I was the only one who didn’t know it.

I’m an overthinker. And in my experience, at least, that means that I will think of every solution possible except for the easiest one.

If you asked me to solve a basic addition math question, I’d start doing advanced college-level calculus to solve it.

If it was Sunday Laundry Day, I'd sit on the floor of my bedroom folding clothes and hyperventilating because there was just so much instead of just doing some of it on another day.

I've noticed over the past year that I do this a lot when I'm writing.

Writing was always a solitary hobby of mine. It was my secret, private thing. Writing was vulnerable, and also, I wasn't good at it. It was something that I enjoyed doing, but not something worthy of sharing. So, being alone in writing, I got stuck a lot. And I think a lot of it was due to the fact that when I was faced with a plot hole—or just any unknown variable—I couldn't find an easy solution. My brain would begin to spiral off into flailing tendrils of convoluted ideas that opened up more questions, that presented more unknowns.

Since branching out and forming writing relationships and sharing my work, I've gotten a lot of help when these instances happen. I do think that it's not always specific to overthinking; sometimes, you just need a second set of eyes on something from somebody who isn't as engrossed as you are in your little fiction world. But most of the time, one of my CPs will just point out a really obvious and easy solution because I overlooked it.

I don’t really know what the point was in writing this. Is there any real point to it? I think it’s just something I’ve recently noticed and wanted to talk about. I still don’t really know how to look for the simple solution first. But maybe since I’ve finally noticed that it’s a problem I have as a writer, I’ll get better with it. Maybe I’ll figure out how to do it. That’s something that I’ve noticed a lot now that I’ve been writing more seriously—I keep encountering problems writing that align with problems I have in my everyday life. Maybe if I can figure out how to overcome them when writing, I can figure out how to overcome them in my everyday life and vice versa.

Just something that I’ve been thinking about and wanted to ramble on. If you know me, then you know that I’m a ramblin’ man. I’m a Gemini (whose Mercury is also in Gemini) so I like to talk. If you don’t know me, you’ll get used to it.

The Stars Want Blood

If you follow me on social media, then you know that she’s out in the world! e-ARCs are still being downloaded daily (and I weep every time I see the download number go up) and… that’s it. Stars is officially out in the world in some capacity. It’s so surreal. 42 days to go until publication. I’m still in shock about it. (Every time I see the countdown on my phone I start stimming LMAO.)

Thank you to everybody that has helped me on this journey. It means more than you can ever know.

Book Details

RELEASE DATE June 19th, 2024 (eBook, paperback)
GENRES Adult romantasy, dark romantasy, new adult, LGBTQIA+
LENGTH 166k words (she THICCC)
PRE-ORDER (eBook only) https://www.amzn.com/B0CTGNLZVS/
GOODREADS https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/206116326

Other Projects

A writing server than I am apart of hosted a two month long writing event: April Showers Bring May Flowers. We spent all of April planning, outlining, brainstorming, etc. and will be dedicating May to drafting. During April, I completed the revised copy of my outline for my Bull Riders WIP and did a lot of world-building and brainstorming for Cosmos/Sirens WIPs. Excited to announce that I am going to be drafting a lot of Bull Riders WIP this month, so keep your eyes open for news on that!