Survival For the New Year

By Connie S. Hall

Last year did your year run smooth or did you sometimes have a hard time keeping it together? Sometimes I found it hard to stick with it, and keep writing. It wasn’t always easy to feel motivated when I wrote.

I wish I had a secret formula to relight your fire when you feel burned out, but I don’t. There weren’t any smoke signals in the air for me. I simply stopped writing. I felt drained and had nothing more to give. I couldn’t even think of five things that gave meaning to my writing. There was nothing that inspired me.

Sometime I made the excuse there was too much to do, and too little time. I soon grew tired of all the days I didn’t feel like writing. Once I realized this, I knew I needed to find new direction and meaning in my writing. I needed to re-evaluate my goals and think about what I want to achieve. The things that used to motivate me just seemed like too much crap to deal with.

I’ve always felt it was okay to take a day off and do the most fun thing I could think of. A day is good, but weeks soon turned into months. (I bet you all thought I always wrote, but I fooled everyone because I had written my blogs months in advance.) My plan of escape wasn’t working for me. I reached a day when I knew it was time to get back to work. My father taught me that you finish what you start. I will finish my stories, but this time I’m going to be careful and not bite off more than I can chew.

It’s going slow, but finally my mind and fingers are working. I have never been a person who could work on only one project at a time. When I feel stuck, I move on to another story. I give myself permission to temporarily skip a problem in one story and move onto something that won’t make me frustrated. When the cobwebs clear out then I’ll go back to the first story.

I still haven’t figured out how to get a burst of energy on the days I simply don’t have any, but one problem at a time. I might not write every day because some days are just too hectic, but I’m going to write every week. I’m going to survive this New Year by stepping up to the plate and writing. There will be no more jumping the ship for me.