Mental Meanderings

Stepping Back to Recharge

After yet another morning struggling to write I gave up. Not really gave up the idea of writing but I decided it was pointless sitting starting at a screen trying to force myself to do anything when nothing was inspiring me. I decided that I'd worked hard this week, and I was happy with what I have accomplished. I decided that today I'd step back, take the pressure off and give myself permission to NOT WRITE.

I'm still here for my blog but I'm not trying to rework a poem, or do reviews, or finish a story, or even edit my book. Today from about 11AM I'd given myself a day off. In a vocation like writing, one where we are our own boss, it's sometimes hard to remember that you need to rest and recharge. It's impossible to write 8 hours a day 7 days a week 365 days a year and be happy. I validate that with the be happy because I suppose someone COULD force themselves to write like that but they'd wipe themselves out and come to hate the art.

Today I woke up feeling horrible. I sat down at the computer feeling horrible. I powered up and started at the screen feeling horrible. I answered my email and I contemplated a review or two, even managed to write a couple. Read over some blogs. Opened chat. And still, hours later I was feeling like I was dragging my mind trying to wake up.

Eventually I called it quits. Gave myself permission not to work today and headed back to bed with a book. Thankfully it was one of my writing books. One of my new ones and I was laying in bed reading I was clicking and thinking and feeling with the words on the page.

Then an amazing thing happened. Ideas started flowing, churring, bubbling to get out. I snatched up my bedside notepad and scrawled them as they came to mind and part of me was saying get up, go write about this now. Another part of me realised that it's entirely possible I was just procrastinating having to finish the book so I kept reading and jotting and reading and jotting.

Come dinner time I was smiling and closing the cover of the book. I'd completed it. I'd read the book cover to cover, absorbed bits and peices in the first reading. But what's more is I was coming away refreshed, feeling empowered. And even more than that I had pages full of notes. I had topics to write about, a quote here or there, theme concepts, characters, content.

I came away having new goals and a clearer insight into what I was doing wrong and how I'd been expecting too much of myself. I can't do everything. I have a passion, a yearning, to write. My greatest joy come from feeling my words flowing on a page and it's when this flow is blocked by expecting more than just words from myself that I get stressed, frustrated, angry with myself.

So today I gave myself permission not to write. And I give myself permission not to write tomorrow. Tomorrow I'm going to play with my kids. Everything else doesn't matter. Tomorrow I'm not a writer I'm just a Mum. Tomorrow is just for them. On Monday after getting dressed and getting my daughter to school, after putting a load of laundry in the machine, turning the dishwasher on, making the beds and pouring myself a cup of tea I'm going to power up and I'm going to write.

Everything else doesn't matter. I just want to feel the words on the page. I want to find the joy in doing this again. I can have fun doing other things as well but first and foremost I have to remember that it's putting fresh words on the page that matters most to me. Not laboring to perfect a poem I wrote weeks ago. Not reviewing other peoples writing. Not spending hours chatting away and avoiding thinking of anything else.

It might seem selfish but hell, I'm entitled to be selfish sometimes. When I've given myself permission to write, and I've accomplished the writing time I want in the day THEN I can do things to please other people. Then I can give back to my community. Then I can look back on things written in the past. But before then, I'm going to write.