I forgot about last week’s blog post.
Well, I ‘forgot’ — in truth I had an unanticipated week off. By ‘unanticipated’ I mean that it wasn’t scheduled; but I could see it coming when the week started. I did my chapter of Broadsides just fine, but other than that … well. I did some writing on some other things.
Mostly, I read. Binge-read. A whole series through. Long one, too. It was the kind of week where, every morning, I’d think ‘I need to do something else’ and fail my will-save throw.
I tend to believe that laziness doesn’t exist. What society sees as laziness is a symptom of something else. Lack of motivation, lack of interest, inability, lack of knowledge — feeling sick, in body or in mind. There’s a myriad of reasons why squishy human beings fail at their goals, and yet we find it so hard to show some grace even to ourselves — not even enough to recognise that there’s something else wrong.
For me, hyperfixation is one of those things. If only I’d been disciplined enough. Better with my habits. Had more willpower. I could have stopped any time I wanted — why didn’t I?
Well, self, because you couldn’t. ‘Just stop’ doesn’t tend to do anything but make a person feel guilty for failing. There’s always something else under it. In this case, it isn’t that my habits weren’t good. It was that an unmet need was greater.
Halfway through the week I yielded. It’s not the first time I’ve had a slow spiral where I can see the trainwreck of my health in motion, but it is the first time I submitted to it just enough to keep the lowest maintenance going. I managed my basic chores. My daily health. My meals. Everything else went away — writing, blogging — but I kept my health up.
I suspect what I really, truly needed was to not have to be present for a while. The series is one of my favourites. It’s a good escape. But I don’t read much lately — I don’t trust many authors anymore. It’s been a long time since I’ve been able to escape this way: consciously, and so thoroughly, that there was no room in my being for anything else. It’s a way of feeding my soul I haven’t done in perhaps far too long, and every creative needs that kind of feeding sooner or later.
So, I didn’t forget last week’s blog. I just didn’t have room for it.
According to my reading material on establishing one’s self publishing, deadlines are the be-all end-all. Don’t skip them, ever. But there’s deadlines and deadlines, priorities and triage. Book releases I haven’t skipped yet, and don’t intend to. Blog is slightly lower on my priority list. Slightly newer, too. Blogging hasn’t become a part of my self yet. It hasn’t become something I do and post without thinking, without having to think.
But I expect I’ll get there. I’ll attend to better habits, and tailor them accordingly. And I’ll get there faster for showing myself a bit of grace. If a person is a sum of their habits, then the person I’d like to be is a forgiving one, and I rank no less than anyone else who might need it.
After all, that’s also the kind of writer I’d like to be.
Aurichalcum Publishing 