*Coughs a little*

*Turns the lights back on*

Man, did I really let over a week pass without posting something around here? I don’t think that’s happened since I started the blarg almost two years ago.

Back then, a lapse like that would have scared the hell out of me. To be honest, it still scares the hell out of me, a little bit. Having started so many things in my life — running, writing, keeping a clean house, staying organized at work, keeping good financial records, NOT leaving evidence of my victims out in plain sight — only to have them grind to a halt a few days, weeks, months later when the initial push wears off, I know the importance of momentum. As a good friend of mine once told me (and I think it may have been a quote from somebody else, but I always attribute it to my friend Dorian), “the more you do, the more you can do.”

Writing 1000 words a day on the first draft of a novel only works if you’re doing it every day. If it’s just something you try to do when you have time, well, you’ll never have time. If going for a thirty-minute run is something you do when you have the energy, you will find yourself suddenly devoid of energy most of the time. If you clean the house only when it gets dirty as opposed to cleaning up little things as they happen, well, the sharknado gets overwhelming pretty fast, dunnit?

So to take a break of over a week from writing (anything, really, not just the daily-ish drivel I spew around here) sorta scares me. I’ve had the feeling more than once over the past week of “gee, I should really write something, just a quick little post about something the kids did, or maybe one more rant on the new Star Wars movie (both of those are coming, by the way).” But I let it slide, consciously so.

Partly to make sure I was spending the time with my family that they deserved. Partly to give my thoughts time to settle. (It’s been a good long while since I just kicked back and let my thoughts ferment a bit, and I’m feeling lots of ideas — for books, for stories, for the blarg — taking shape as a result). Partly, though, just for the break itself.

We work so hard in our day-to-day. Some harder than others, but everybody believes that they are working hard, and it’s true to some degree. Whether it’s the CEO working from dawn til dusk, the teacher taking home reams of papers to grade outside of work (HAHAHA not that that’s me, but those teachers exist), the stay-at-home mom who waits hand-and-foot upon the tiny humans she must teach to be good people… even the unemployed guy who hangs around and plays video games works hard in his own way. These things take stamina. These things tax the spirit.

I’m fortunate that I work in a profession with these built-in respites from the grind, that I get two weeks off for the holidays to spend time with family, to forget about work for a while, to recharge. Which is what it’s been all about for the last couple of weeks.

A big, giant pause button. Which I was glad to hit.

But I think, now, I’m even more glad to unpause and get back to work. I’ve got novels to edit. Short stories to draft. Other things to do stuff to.

Starting with cleaning these spiders out of the corners around here. Where is John Goodman when you need him?

This weekly remotivational post is part of Stream of Consciousness Saturday. Every weekend, I use Linda G. Hill’s prompt to refocus my efforts and evaluate my process, sometimes with productive results.