Back to last Saturday: When the storm of self-hate finally blew itself out, and I was fully able to turn my attention back to the subject I'd intended the draft to be about (the energetic cost of things left undone), I hit on an understanding of something so important and unexpected that, in the draft itself, I interrupted myself mid-sentence with "...oh my."
I had turned my attention to the wounds we carry (go back and read my caustic litany if you're confused as to why) and suddenly the seeds of this appeared:
You suffer a wound. You are wounded and you need to heal. Healing takes as much energy as it takes. The worse the wound, the more energy it requires to heal. Simple enough.
You can, if you want, pick at the scabs. Then the wound doesn't heal. And it also takes a little energy to pick a scab. Now you have just made things worse: the wound still needs the energy it needs to heal, and you have also spent energy unproductively.
(And it always seems like a good idea at the time, doesn't it?)
You can do that again and again and again. There's nothing quite like continuing to revel in the pain of an injury. You can point to your wounds and shriek with a martyr's righteousness: "Look what's been done to me!" More energy wasted, and the healing still delayed.
Sometimes, when you do that kind of thing, the wound begins to fester. Now you have the initial wound and an infection as well. An untreated infection will get worse, will spread, will do greater and greater damage.
Suddenly, rest and the passage of time are no longer enough. Now, you must take action in order to cure the infection your actions have caused, and healing must become your active priority.
How many times have I done exactly what I've just described? How many times have I suffered an injury and, through my actions, made it from bad to worse to an actual crisis?
Let me now step away from the language of wounds and healing and into an analogy that's more generalizable and aphoristic:
When you find yourself stuck in a hole, first of all, STOP DIGGING.