Resetting The Vibe By Accepting Your Curse

If you have ever interacted with me on an average Sunday, I can all but guarantee you know the following:

• I am a Bengals fan.

  
  

• I take fantasy football a little too seriously for someone who knows next to nothing about football.

  
  

• My fantasy football team is inexplicably, unconditionally, and irrevocably cursed (or whatever Bella Swan said).

That is no exaggeration, I assure you.

Since pretty much my first season, my fantasy football team has suffered a long streak of injuries, several of which were season-ending or had that particular player out on the IR for weeks on end. Joe Burrow is my most frequent victim, from his rookie year ACL tear to last season's Turf Toe. The one season I didn't draft him was the year that the Bengals made it to the Super Bowl so...

The 2025-2026 season was especially rough for my roster. I had first pick in my league's draft and had done the research. I had a game plan and hopes for redemption. I got the Burrow-Chase Bayou Bengals stack that had been on my bucket list for multiple seasons. The rest of my team seemed solid.

Those hopes were rapidly dashed. Three of my players were out on IR by the end of Week 2. But that was only the beginning.

Two words: Cam Skattebo. Picked him up from the waivers to replace yet another injured player, and his season ended three weeks later thanks to what the Yahoo! Fantasy Football app notification described as a "gruesome" season-ending break. I also had his team's QB Jaxson Dart, who ended up sitting out a few games because of a concussion shortly after.

At one point, I had what I dubbed a "full back" because I had FOUR quarterbacks on my roster due to keeping Burrow on IR, Dart out, Daniel Jones on a bye week (don't worry, his wounds came later), and Aaron Rodgers because I needed SOMEBODY in my lineup and didn't want to drop who I already had and risk an opponent snatching them up.

And yes, that was the week Rodgers suffered a fractured wrist, thank you so much for asking!

It was laughable, and we're only scratching the surface. My record is a player being deemed Doubtful within two hours of picking him up from the waivers.

The curse is nothing new—Burrow breakage included—but last season had each and every one of my flabbers gasted.

I spent a majority of it in ninth place out of ten players, already looking ahead to the next season and jokingly making plans to draft the QB on my least-favorite NFL team to "use my powers for good" because, as my coworker put it, "either the does really good and you get the points and win, or you break him really bad and you still kind of win."

Because as I not-so-elegantly put it, my fantasy roster is where NFL seasons go to die horrible, baffling deaths.

Coincidentally, this was also the year I watched the entire Final Destination series for the first time. For the uninitiated, the basic plot of each film is that the protagonist has a premonition of a deadly accident and successfully gets a few would-be victims out of harm's way, only for Death to track them down one by one to restore balance. Kind of like the Saw franchise, we're just there to see what convoluted Rube Goldberg death traps have been concocted with every new installment. We know that everyone is more than likely going to die by the time the credits roll, the only question is how.

This all inspired a name change. d'Fense & d'Fensibility was no more. We were now The Final Destination.

It also called for a new, intentionally poorly photoshopped icon, per tradition.

I had a vision. Two words: logging truck.

I got lucky and found an orange one, which got plunked down on Paycor's end zone, popped Burrow in the driver's seat, and added a couple of easter eggs that are only funny to me. The chaotic beauty of this masterpiece was also imperceptible once shrunken down to icon size but, again, this was purely for the sake of my own giggles because I didn't have much else going for me.

The rebrand took place around the midpoint of the season. I was sorely in ninth place out of ten and already planning ahead for the next year.

But as fate would have it, the vibe shifted.

I somehow defeated the top three players in our respective matchups, climbed all the way to third place at one point, and actually clinched my playoff spot for the first time ever.

Clinching simply means securing your spot because it's become mathematically impossible for you to get knocked out of playoff contention.

I finished the season in sixth place, a vast improvement from ninth, and I swear a lot of that had to do with accepting the curse after so long and resetting my fantasy team's vibe.

And it's something that can be applied to writing.

We all have our challenges that make writing harder. Maybe you have a chronic illness, you're having to balance your writing ambitions with your day job, or you're feeling creatively drained or overwhelmed by having too many ideas. We all have those days when the words will just not go.

If allowed to fester unchecked, that frustration can become resentment or—possibly even worse, where creative endeavors are concerned—ambivalence.

That's where accepting your curses come into play. It's about understanding those challenges and learning to work with them, not against them.

This all begs the question: how do you reset your vibe as a writer?

• Write with a pen name — Silly as it sounds, I really do think changing my fantasy team's name was the thing that changed its trajectory, and writing with a pen name has plenty of its own benefits, too. For me, that includes a mental gear shift. It's like wearing your employee nametag. Remembering that I'm in "Avril Mode" sometimes makes it easier for me to get into a writing mindset.

  
  

• Dress for the job you want — We've all heard that one, and it can be applied to your vibe as a writer. When we talk about the writer's aesthetic, you might picture the typical academia look. Plaid and tweed blazers with patches on the elbows and glasses. That may not be your style, though. I feel like my writer dress code, if that's what you want to call it, is somewhere between light academia and cottagecore, with a few dashes of Regency Era influence. I like to keep things cute and cozy when I write. Putting on a soft sweater and putting my hair up in a claw clip helps me feel more in the mood I want to set as I'm working on my WIP. Sometimes, that also includes painting my nails to match the color scheme of whatever project I'm working on. There aren't any rules to this. It's all about what makes you feel like a writer.

  
  

• Aromatherapy — Longtime readers of the blog know that I'm a fan of weaving aromatherapy into my writing habits, in part because of how it can enhance or shift the vibe. Some scents, like lemon, eucalyptus, and mint, are said to aid focus. Vanilla and cinnamon can help create a cozy environment. Some writers, like myself, might have a designated story candle for their project, choosing a fragrance reminiscent of their setting or specific scenes. If you're feeling stuck, a new fragrance can help refresh your space.

  
  

• Write somewhere new — I do a lot of my writing on the go. It started out of necessity to coordinate transportation to my day job while I'm not driving because of medical reasons, but it ended up being a change of pace that encouraged me to be more intentional with my writing time. Venturing out to a local coffee spot or the library—or even moving your writing gear to another room in your home—can offer a change of scenery to help you see your story from a different angle.

  
  

• Change up how you write — one of my most reliable ways to shake off writer's block is changing how I write. If you've been staring at a blank screen for too long, shifting to a handwritten draft might help ground your thoughts and get your ideas flowing again. In a similar vein, you may have heard of the Comic Sans editing hack, where you change your document's font to Comic Sans because its goofy nature can make editing less imposing and make it easier to catch errors that might have otherwise slipped past your notice in the standard Times New Roman. You don't have to wait until you're in the editing phase to implement this hack, though. Changing your font can help snap you out of that mental funk.

  
  

• Write something else — one benefit to having this blog—and, more recently, my YouTube channel—is that it gives me another form of writing to work on when I need a mental break from my fiction projects. Blog posts require a different headspace than fiction, making them a bite-sized exercise that still allows me to feel like I've accomplished something writing-related. You could also try dabbling with flash fiction if you're working on a novel, writing a scene from a secondary character's POV, or even start a completely different project like I've done with my contemporary football romance nicknamed Project Scrimmage. It's all about trying your hand at something else when you need a mental break.

Like most writers, I write for enjoyment and a love of storytelling, but that doesn't mean I'm immune to slumps and rough patches. And just like last season's iteration of my fantasy football roster, sometimes all you need to do to climb out of that slump is reset your vibe and embrace your curse.

How do you switch things up in your writing? Share your favorite tips in the comments so others can give them a try!