I don’t take enough time off.
Which is more than a bit ironic, given how much I twit my husband about checking email and working from home.
The great thing about writing from home is that I can do it anywhere, any time, in the cracks of regular life.
That’s also the worst thing about it. Because I start trying to fill every crack with productive time. Even my down time is spent folding clothes or scrapbooking–I never allow myself TV time unless I am doing something productive.
This weekend we went camping overnight, and I left my computer at home. It was harder to make that decision than I would like to admit. Early morning is my best time, and to be camped beside the river, in the quiet, with only the tree frogs and the insects for company? I knew I was giving up a precious commodity.
But I also knew I needed a break. The thrill of writing a new manuscript has settled into a rhythm of high motivation and determination, but I also feel an unsettling certainty that I’ve got all my eggs in one basket right now, and I need to be writing music and essays and nonfiction pieces. Things that, yanno. Pay. Not to mention promoting the things I already have out there. But all that nibbles at the edge of my enjoyment, and this week, as I’ve been fighting off a cold, I realized I was teetering on the edge of burnout.
So I left the computer at home.
And I had trouble getting to sleep, so in the chill of a fifty-degree morning beside the Missouri River, I stayed in my sleeping bag until the kids got us up at, well, (cough-cough-six-thirty).
I didn’t miss a moment of our first real campout as a family, and for that I’m very grateful.
Kathleen M. Basi 
That is so awesome. I’ve had that fight with myself lately too to take more breaks.
We went camping when my children were growing up. Even started a Catholic family camping group. My boys still talk about those camping trips whenever we get together. It was one of the best things we ever did as a family.
This was our first real campout. We’ve done tents on our parents’ lawns but this was the first, have-to-walk-to-the-bathroom, bring-all-your-food-and-cook-over-the-fire kind of campout. Hoping we’ll get to do it at least once more this year.
On Mon, Jun 1, 2015 at 9:43 AM, Kathleen M. Basi wrote:
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