Hi, everyone, and welcome to Bad on Paper podcast. I'm Olivia Mentor. And I'm Becca Freeman.

And today we are doing a holiday themed three things episode. Just a festive little bonbon of an episode.

Yes. But first, let's get into some highs and lows. What is your high?

My high is just the general feeling of peace I have

right now. I woke up on Wednesday morning. I feel like sometimes it takes me a few days to come down

from a deadline. And I woke up and one of the first things I thought was how incredible it felt

to not have this sense of pressure hanging over me or this sense of should

hanging over me that I feel like I've been working on this book for almost three years.

And even when I'm not working on it, there's something in the back of my head that almost

says, well, you should be working on it. You're not done yet.

Like, I obviously know that I'm allowed to have rest and I want to have balance, but there's still

this gremlin in the back of my mind saying should. And to wake up and not have that because the book is

fully done. Oh my God. I feel like a huge vest that they used to take x-rays and the dentist just got lifted off of me.

Yeah, it's like a whole new world. Oh, my gosh. The shape of every day feels different.

I know. I need to do some thinking between now and when I start my next book, which I think is

probably in January, about how I avoid falling into that mindset again. Because I obviously

knew there was some heaviness around finishing this book, but wow, the absence of it has made

it so much clearer how

different I feel. And you're saying you don't want to go back to every deadline making you feel

that overwhelmed, or not overwhelmed, but I don't know, you tell me the right word.

I think it's just the sense of pressure and the sense of guilt over whenever I'm not working on it and it's not

finished that I have to answer for that to myself. So maybe it goes back to like the perfectionism thing.

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