Today was a crazy day. In fact, the whole weekend and start to this week was pretty hectic.
Holiday decorating. My wife still settling in from a return from Vegas. Gearing up for school break. There’s a lot of family stuff that needed doing – and still needs doing.
Oh, and then there’s the whole writing thing that I do.
I’ve touched on my writing habits before. I know what other people think one’s writing habits should be if they want to be a writer. I’ve set schedules, I’ve broken schedules. I’ve written in sprints, I’ve written somewhat marathon-like. You can do any or all of that. You can even do none of that.
And sometimes you break.
To be clear, I’m talking about two different types of “break” here. There are two kinds that we all have to deal with.
There’s the kind where you push yourself to the limits on all fronts until you break.
And then there’s the kind where you push yourself to the limits on all fronts until you take a break.
When you break, things can break around you. They usually do. When you don’t take care of certain parts of your life and your work, they become more fragile. They break a lot easier because you’re not handling them with enough care. Sometimes it’s your job, sometimes it’s your home life. Sometimes it’s aspects of both that become brittle while others stay strong. Results (or lack thereof) may vary.
When you take a break, you give the fragile things time to become better handled. Attention gets spread out better, because it’s not being directed at the thing you needed to take a break from. Things strengthens, things regenerate. Things heal. Again, results (or lack thereof) may vary.
This weekend – and up until really late tonight – I took a break to keep myself from breaking. I’ve got a lot that I want to do and want to make sure I’m in the right place to do as much as I can. Without breaking, of course.
And by taking that break, the results will be very, very good.
Photo credit: Samurai Johnny (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)
