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.
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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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