Procrastination Came by for a Visit

This is me in the hot weather!

I’ve been slacking. I think part of it is the hot weather; I don’t do well in a heat wave. At least that is the excuse I’m using right now.

First off, I want to give a big thank you to everyone who read “Her Holiday Fireworks.” I hope you enjoyed it. It did better than I thought it would. That story was a spur-of-the-moment thing. Seriously, one day I thought, I should do a Forth of July story, got an idea and Bam! I was off writing. I’d cut it really close to get it out before the holiday, but I did it.

Of course, while I wrote it, a million other things needed my attention. After I published the story, I thought I’ll just take the holiday weekend off. After that, other commitments reared their ugly heads.

Then I was like, okay, I need to start another story. I’d sit down at the computer and type something. Delete it. Try again. Then I thought, well, where am I going? Am I going to write the other two stories in “The Office After Hours” that I was planning on? But if you read my other post here, you’ll know that I’ve sort of lost steam on that. It happens. I struggled with those two stories. Honestly, “Her Holiday Fireworks” was a breeze to write compared to those two stories.

Basically, I felt lost.

Flailing and Falling

During this time, I thought, gee, I need to do a blog post at least. But even then I felt a loss for words. Then I decided, well, maybe I need to set my computer up differently to get a better workflow going. Maybe I just need to redo my whole operating system.

Side note: I’m a total Linux nerd. I can change operating systems on a whim. But I'll not bore you with all that nerd speak.

Then I thought, maybe I need to use a different app to write with. Maybe something more suited for writing. I’d written the first two stories in LibreOffice. The holiday story I wrote in a Markdown editor (basically a plain text editor with specific markup for headings and such) and I’d outlined that story first. But instead of sticking with that, oh no, I thought I should look at different apps. Luckily, being on Linux, the number of apps is limited. Meaning I couldn't waste too much time procrastinating.

I’ve also sort of let myself go since I started this self-publishing adventure. The needle on the scale was going in the wrong direction. The advantage of a plague going on is I could just blame it on that. But in reality, I’ve always exercised at home anyway, so it really wasn’t an excuse. I was sitting way too much writing. Or in recent days lack of writing and just wasting time on the computer.

Finding Balance

Ever since I buckled down and said, all right, I’ll finish something and put it out there, I’ve felt off balance in a way. My health was declining, my mental health probably wasn’t that much better, and I was all sorts of frustrated with not coming up with an idea for a story.

This past week I’ve done yoga daily, I’ve gotten back to using a to-do list for daily things that need done that I always forget, and I redid the operating system on the computer because, you know, I freaking can. (‘cause I’m a nerd! ;-)

I feel like I’m coming back together. Which means another story will come your way soon.

I’m certain I was suffering burn out. When I said, okay I will do this at long last, I’ve felt like I’ve been on go, go, go ever since. I was trying to get stories out as quickly as I could like everyone else. But I’m not everyone else. I’m me. And that’s okay.

So now it’s time to get back to what I love, writing. I’ve got ideas churning in the old gray matter again. I’ve got this blog post written. I’m back at it. But I’m trying to maintain more of a life balance this time.

And in case anyone is wondering, did I think about giving up during this time? No, not once. Writing is something I have to do. During these past couple of weeks I’ve done a ton of journaling, which helps to sort out my little noodle brain. I still have tons of stories in me, somewhere.

I knew starting out that this would be an adventure of sorts, and that is part of why I’m sharing all of this with you. Because maybe one of you is on the same adventure, maybe you are hitting bumps in the road too. We all do. It happens. I’m not perfect. I’m just doing the best I can like everyone else.

Well, sexy readers, that’s all for now. I will get another story out, hopefully soon. I’ll also try to keep this blog updated better than I did the past two weeks. So stay tuned and stay sexy!