Prioritizing You Before Your Writing - Week 15-18 Recap

Woo my. It has been a spell.

Sorry my once-a-week blog posting has turned into once a month. My work continues to remain very busy and very draining of my creative juices (a huge downside to having a day job that revolves so heavily around writing). The little energy and time I managed to squirrel away I decided to use on revising, rather than blog posting. Hence the prolonged absence.

I’m hopeful that I’ll be able to get back to a somewhat regular cadence (regular in air quotes).

Despite being busy, I managed to write or revise every day except two of them. For those keeping track, that means I’ve only missed 4 days since I started my Year of Writing Project on Nov 1, 2020. Which, is still pretty amazing that I’ve written that much. But this past month, it hasn’t felt amazing.

In addition to work being busy, my partner and I are getting ready to house hunt, sell our condo, and prep for baby #1’s arrival. As you can imagine, my typically long list of priorities doubled.

Going into this year-long project, a huge goal of mine was to make writing my number one priority. By writing, at least a little bit every day, I’d finally get a chance to focus on the thing that makes me really really happy.

Except…

Writing doesn’t always make me happy.

I discovered that this past month. There were a few long, exhausting days where I forced myself to work on revision plans. Instead of turning my mood around (like it normally does), it made it worse. It was after a few of these sluggish days when I decided to take two days off and try and figure out what was going on.

After catching up on sleep and consuming copious amounts of sugar, I figured it out.

Writing is my passion. My love. It brings me great joy and satisfaction. It makes my heart sing. Storytelling is in my bones.

But these bones get tired.

Every day this past month, I’d kept rearranging and reorganizing my priority list in my mind. Writing, always writing. And chores. Errands on Thursdays. Need to respond to emails. House stuff. Writing. Must do writing.

No matter what order I prioritized things in, there was always one thing missing from the list.

Me.

I’d been so focused and determined to rearrange my life so writing was my number one priority that I put writing above myself. I mean, let’s be honest, I was putting doing dishes above myself, so obviously there was a real problem there, haha.

Yes, I love writing. But I’m more than a writer.

I’m a person who needs time to relax and rest and not feel guilty for watching some TV and being lazy for an evening.

I’ve been pushing myself way too hard. I got burned out. I blamed work, but it was also my fault too. I prioritized everything else before me, so of course I crashed and burned.

Even if writing is your gift and life-blood, it is okay to take a break and focus on yourself. After all, you write the words. You are the story teller. Your books can’t thrive if you’re not.

This past month, I learned that I need to take better care of myself. If writing doesn’t feel good, then I will take a break, regardless of my Year of Writing Project. (Believe me, I’m already gathering up lots of thoughts for my year-end summary.)

I will now become my number one priority, with writing a very close second. ;)

My mood regarding the past week: Happy I have the time to blog again!

My mood for this coming week: Take it day by day.

Other insights: I finally figured out how I’m going to track my revision process. It seemed a bit silly to track word count, since I end up deleting a ton of words and rewriting them during a second draft. Instead, I’m going to track pages revised each day. I hope to have some exciting stats to share in the next blog post.

That's it for now. Til next week, er, time!