Writers are not really great about this self-care thing. Just ask the Internet or any writers you know. We forget food, errands, sometimes hygiene, all because we’ve got fictional words driving us to type them out and make them real on paper/word processor. It’s a thing. The frustration when we’re not producing up to our own standards is also a thing (see above for helpful links regarding all of that).
Self-Care is important.
I have a double-dose of forgetting about self-care because not only am I a writer, my family is also the worst at this. We grind and grind until we drop and then once we’re back upright, grinding more. We never stop and we’re not overly fond of slowing down from the things we need to get done.
So in a move that really surprises no one at all, least of all me, because of all of the compounded stuff in the last three-four months (okay really since April to be honest) – I hit the actual burnout point. Technically I hit it at the beginning of last month, but I still had a con to do at that point, so I pushed through it. Which meant that I spent the entire rest of the month of October reaping the whirlwind exhaustion and fatigue from having just pushed myself so far without a whole lot of down or recovery time.
I did 37 total panels at four conventions in between a trip to NYC, my baby brother leaving for college, my best friend coming for a weeklong visit, and a whole wealth of immediate and extended family events, house issues and the ever present, always fun medical issues. I’ve been to Atlanta three times and Louisville once. I’ve had a short story published and invites to submit to three other anthologies, the Patreon is still running for various short stories and novellas, and we’re coming up on the major holiday season. It’s been a lot lately.
I’m an introvert so recharging generally means I’m sitting somewhere comfy by myself, enjoying the quiet and stillness of just being inside my own brain and not needing to respond to any exterior stimulae unless I wanted to. Unfortunately with a day job and cats who demand to be fed at regular intervals, recharging had to come at points where I wasn’t working at the full time day job. So literally everything else had to get reshuffled around to make sure that I could have the time to refresh and recharge. So that’s why there hasn’t been a lot of posting here from me here (if you follow on me on Twitter, different story, but Twitter doesn’t lend itself well to good thinky posts like I prefer to do here). You’ll see more posting now, some of it normal updates like the reviews and the wednesday reads, some of them will probably be hilarious posts about November and writing/writers. It’s deep into NaNoWriMo after all (i’m at 18k and change and I hit the part of loathing all the words ever, so really I’m right on schedule for the nanocycle of writing or if you prefer, I’m right at “The Tango of Mirth and Shame” ).
So hi, everyone! I’m back and you’ll start to see a lot more posts floating your way very soon.