Pages

Wednesday, August 26, 2009

Catching up is hard to do

My niece, Vik and I standing outside of the balcony (above) where Ernest Hemingway wrote "A Farewell to Arms."

My forever boyfriend, Bruce, riding on the ski lift down Baldy.

Me, doing the same as Bruce.

No, I'm not dead and neither is my blog. Both have been on what I believed was a short vacation. Or rather, a longer vacation than expected by me. First there was the vacation, then there was the recovery-catch-up-return-to-normal-life period, often the longer of the two--or at least it seems. While having fun, the time soars away.

Before, I used to balk at this "vacation recovery stage." After all, I'd taken plenty of time off, I should return home invigorated, energetic and enthusiastic, ready to leap back into, well, everything. Instantly have the house clean, the bills paid, and write all the pages I didn't while I was gone. I spent energy berating myself instead of doing what I could do and when.

Now, after vacation is part of the vacation. This works much better. Especially if the vacation has been of the American style "Go!Go!Go!" variety, instead of sitting on a beach somewhere, napping. At the most, guilt cuts into my energy and makes it that much more difficult to catch up and get back to normal. At the least, relaxing about returning from vacation allows me to realize the fun lessons, the epiphanies, the life memories, that help me with my writing. And recognizing the need for recovery time makes it much shorter.

How about you? When you return from a vacation, do you leap into action? Or are you like me, and need a break from the break first?

Wednesday, August 12, 2009

Post Conference Part One: Time is Money

Let's all pretend this is Monday's posting, as promised. Don't all creative people struggle with high expectations of what will be accomplished in a short time? Don't we all expect to come back from such an event invigorated and ready with tons of energy to leap to write or whatever? Do you experience this type of over-expectation?

Since I received a "yes" (go ahead and send pages) from several agents, I'm excited to send those out. But as my good friend Kathy of Well Placed Words mentioned to me, we forget that even good stress is stress and while the fatigue doesn't last as long as from stress, all the excitement and focus and work is tiring. And everything takes longer than is expected. Unpack, do laundry, catch up from days away...meanwhile it's frustrating not to work on writing.

So, dear readers, does this resonate? What do you do when over-expectations get in the way?