The Return

tyunglebower ♦ August 10, 2015 ♦ Leave a comment

I am back from my brief hiatus. Since my last blog post, I got my first ever smart phone (I know), my sister and her daughter visited the house, I finished watching a series of 48 lectures on DVD about ancient Egyptian history that I bought from The Great Courses, had dinner with a friend, and met up with my Social Introverts meetup group. (Most of whom that week were totally new to the gathering.)

Somewhere through all of that, I had time to clean, and do some fiction writing, as well as some often-neglected journal writing.

Doesn’t exactly sound like the time off I suggested it would be a week ago Thursday, does it?

And yet, despite the various things going on, it was helpful to be “off.” To simply experience the various activities without calculating when and how to do something else was helpful. Presence. Such a key to good communicating and writing, yet something we busy or restless writers often forget to embrace. I wasn’t a Buddha last week, but I was on a somewhat different wavelength as I pursued my commitment of “not working.”

Not only did I not blog, but I had no freelance pieces to work on during last week. As a result, there was no looming deadline for either myself or anyone else for which I write. As a result, different sorts of thoughts and ideas entered my mind not only for potential future writing, but for the nature of current WIPs.

Not that I chased ideas, as that would have defeated the purpose of the time “off.” I was to worry or plan nothing in particular for that week, even with my writing. I kept to that agreement with myself. Yet some potential stepstones, or broader ideas did float down the stream into my view a few times.

No epiphanies, per se. Yet taking the pressure off of certain parts of my mind for a week allowed energy to flow in some slightly new directions, to take a few off-roads within my imagination as it were. This can and should be done anytime, vacation or not, and with some time, I do. I just found I didn’t need a GPS as much to get there during my week off. (Metaphor beaten senseless as of now.)

All of this means of course that several things are due this week, and I have a few other things that must be taken care of as well. Isn’t that always the way when your hiatus is complete? Yet I plan to take shorter hiati (?) more often going forward. I’m coming up on a bunch of things that need consideration and work and reflection, both in my writing world and outside of it. To get the best out of it, I may have to force myself to take 2 days off here and there between so called “vacations.” I think I can convince myself to allow this, if I consider that my writing and perspectives will improve overall.

If you can’t take a week take to days, or one, in which you do and plan nothing. See what it does for your writing, both while you are off, and after you come back.