From marathon to blogathon fear beneath the finish line.
It isn’t Pandora’s jar I open every morning, at least not in the mythological sense. It’s my idea trap — a glass jar full of folded scraps where I’ve imprisoned passing thoughts before they could escape into the chaos of daily life. Every time a topic pops into my head, I scribble it down and drop it in. A ritual, a safeguard, a small victory against forgetfulness.
Most mornings, the process is simple. I reach in, unfold a slip, and begin. But today, my hand hovered. The jar suddenly looked far too philosophical for 7 a.m. Should I pick a slip? Use Blogchatter’s prompt? Talk about my mission? Or perhaps tease the book that’s been simmering longer than a pot of dal on a slow flame? The travel pieces, the reviews — all patiently queuing up, rolling their eyes. No dearth of material. Just a strange reluctance to choose. Spoiled for choice, afraid to begin.
Abundance can be such a trickster. Too many options, and the freedom starts to feel like pressure. I stood there, overthinking the act of thinking, and realised this wasn’t about topics — it was about commitment. That word again. Heavy, overused, and yet so capable of making even seasoned writers suddenly need a snack break.
And perhaps that’s why the word marathon gives me hives.
The original marathon, you might remember, wasn’t exactly a wellness event. Around 490 BCE, a Greek messenger named Pheidippides ran from the battlefield of Marathon to Athens — roughly 26 miles — to deliver the news of victory over the Persians. He arrived, gasped “Rejoice, we are victorious!” and promptly died. History, being the drama queen it is, immortalised the act. Centuries later, we commemorated it by creating a sport that makes people willingly do the same thing, only with better shoes and electrolyte drinks.
Now we’ve tamed the concept into friendlier formats — half-marathons, walkathons, cyclothons, speakathons, and, in our content-driven age, the blogathon. Write every day, show up consistently, build stamina. Theoretically noble; practically daunting. No one’s chasing me with a stopwatch, yet I still feel the faint whistle of a starting gun in my head.
That’s the odd thing about self-imposed challenges: no external judge, but the inner critic shows up in full athletic gear. She’s loud, she’s competitive, and she insists on timing me anyway. There’s no one to penalise me if I skip a day, but guilt has its own stopwatch.
As a hypnotherapist, I recognise this pattern immediately — the quiet tug-of-war between the conscious and the subconscious. The conscious mind is logical; it loves plans, jars, and lists. The subconscious, however, has a flair for rebellion. It whispers, “Do you really want to do this today?” not out of laziness, but self-protection. When the joy of creation starts feeling like obligation, the subconscious pulls the emergency brake. Hesitation, I’ve learned, is sometimes your mind’s way of saying, You’ve drifted from why you began.
That insight softens the self-criticism. Maybe my pause this morning wasn’t procrastination at all. Maybe it was an invitation to slow down, to check my emotional pulse. Writing, after all, is a kind of trance — a gentle, self-induced hypnosis where thought and rhythm sync, and time stops being a tyrant. It’s not so much about putting words down as it is about listening to what the words are trying to become.
And, fittingly, today happens to be Take Back Your Time Day — a reminder that hours are not infinite and that busyness isn’t the same as purpose. It made me smile, the timing of it all. Perhaps the universe was nudging me to treat my writing not as another item on the to-do list but as a way of reclaiming time — of taking it back from the noise. Maybe the act of sitting here, thinking too much and writing anyway, is precisely how I do that.
It’s easy to forget that creativity isn’t a sprint. It’s more like an amble through unpredictable terrain. Some days you glide, some days you trip, and occasionally you sit on the roadside questioning your life choices. But the movement — however uneven — still counts. The jar, the prompts, the false starts, the pauses: they’re all part of the marathon’s rhythm.
So maybe this isn’t writer’s block. Maybe it’s my mind asking for a breather — a chance to reset its stride and run at a kinder pace. Because the original marathoner didn’t stop for water, and look how that ended. I, on the other hand, plan to hydrate, stretch, and occasionally enjoy the scenery.
For now, I’ll reach into the jar again, unfold a slip, and begin. Not because I have to — but because I get to. And that, I suspect, is the real finish line.
Maybe the real marathon is learning when to pause — how do you take back your time?
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