Hiatus

Old Lady of the Sea, Trinidad State Beach,
Trinidad, Humboldt County, California

Back in November, I was challenged to participate in the November Blog Posting Month (NoBloPoMo) "event" wherein one posts a blog a day. I've kept that up for the last four months and am proud to say, I've blogged every day for the last 120 days. And some days, more than once. Of course, I also had a lot of time on my hands, which made it easy.

But... You saw that coming, huh? But, I've been working for the last month. I'll grant you, it's not the most stressful job in the world. And yet, at the end of the day, when I step off the train, I'm tired. By the time I get home and have some dinner, I'm pooped. The result is, I can't get the brain cells to fire enough juice to be creative, let alone command the old fingers to type.

I have several pieces drafted that are queued up and need tweaking before I post them, but they're bigger pieces like the one I recently wrote about John McPhee's Rising from the Plains. In terms of day-to-day writing, I'm trying too hard to come up with stuff and it's starting to feel forced. I want to keep writing every single day, because I've enjoyed it and it's been good exercise for me, but I'm feeling a little worn out at the moment and I think my writing might be suffering because of that. (And even if it's not, I know my brain feels like it is.)

And, let's not even talk about how my staying on top of reading everyone else's fabulous blogs has suffered. Unless I clandestinally (is that a word?!) snatch moments here and there at work, (which is technically against policy, but for which I'm forgiven because I'd otherwise be staring into space 75 percent of my time, even after I've asked my supervisor if there's something, anything, I can do) I'm missing a lot of good writing and connection with all of you.

I'm also way behind on a couple of projects I took on before the PharmaCo. job started and that I haven't completed. I have a client who's waiting for a proposal that is now two weeks overdue and an author who is waiting for me to copyedit his book so we can send it to the publisher for production. I should have had a first round read done last week and I haven't even started. Oh, and there's the non-profit in Pennsylvania I haven't heard from in a month or more that I've volunteered to help with a fund development plan. I need to follow up with them, too.

All that said, I'm going on hiatus this weekend and I may extend it into next week. When I return in a few days, it will likely be with only occasional posts. I'd like to think I'll be back up and writing daily once I settle into a routine that leaves me with more than just energy to eat dinner, run a few errands, catch up on personal emails, put on my pajamas, pop in a Netflix, read a few pages from a book, and be in bed by 10:00 (though, it's more often been 11:00 or 12:00, which doesn't help when you have to be up at 6:30.)

Thank you for reading. I've loved writing. And I hope to be back very, very soon!

Photo copyright: Janet M Kincaid, 2004.