Finding the Right Kind of Busy

I've had some interesting things to say this week about my busy schedule. And I'll continue it with the following statement:

Being too busy kills dreams.

That might sound a bit harsh, but the reality is that if you want to achieve your dreams, you've got to figure out how to be the right kind of busy.

I'll take one sentence and give you a bunch of fill-in-the-blank answers. All of these answers are dream killers. Here it is:

Spending too much time _______ will keep you from achieving your dreams.

• chasing money
• working
• watching TV
• scrolling Facebook
• sleeping
• doing things you don't enjoy

Society as a whole is way too busy - we all know that. But not everyone is busy to the detriment of their dreams.

What are you doing with your time? Is what you are doing a stepping stone to your goals or is it a hamster wheel?

Here are the questions I've been asking myself lately, and maybe you can ask yourself these questions too:

• Am I too focused on making money?
• Do I work too many hours at my job?
• Am I making time to pursue the things I dream of pursuing?
• Do I have plans for where I'm going next?
• Am I using my free time well?
• Do I have any bad habits that are keeping me from progressing towards my dreams?

I'd be interested to hear how others answer these questions. Here are my answers:

• Yes. I initially was focused on earning money for future goals, and somewhere along the line it shifted to just earning money.
• Yes. I'm working too many hours at my job.
• Sort of. But sort of not.
• I used-ta-did. I abandoned said plans due to crazy work schedule.
• No. I'm working myself to the point of exhaustion.
• Yes. I need to work on my confidence, get up earlier, and stop scrolling social media.

The first step to positive change is figuring out where you're at in your life. The next step is figuring out how to move to where you want to go.

First step, check!

Having Confidence as a Writer

Today is one of those "I can't focus at all, I mean at all, I mean totally at all (continue this to infinity)" kind of days. And there are multiple reasons for this:

1. I didn't sleep last night. Brains don't work very well without sleep, do they?
2. It's a Monday. Need I say more?
3. I'm reevaluating. And by that I mean reevaluating how I'm spending my time. 
4. I live with cats. They are oh so cute, and I love to snuggle them at random times throughout the day.
5. It's First Monday and I'm excited. The first Monday of the month I meet my friend Bill for dinner, and we have a grande ole time.

I haven't touched my book manuscript in months, and I waffle around why that is. I think, as I touched on in my last post, I've just been busy busy busy. And when you're busy busy busy, it's hard to write write write. Well, let me amend this statement.

It's hard to write if you're not obsessed with writing. And I'm not obsessed with writing. I love it, but I'm not obsessed with it. At least not all the time.

For me, writing is more like an on-again, off-again relationship. I write in spurts, I produce stuff in waves. I experience fleeting moments of brilliance that quickly flit away into the atmosphere from which they came. See that? That was one. I think. Right? Surely!

But I do sometimes wonder how much of this behavior is attributed to a deep down lack of confidence.

Every artist struggles with feeling like they are good enough. I've written about it before, and I'm sure if you want to scroll through my posts you'll find it quickly enough. But artists (and I hesitate to even call myself one - how's that for lack of confidence?) always want to produce something great. Nobody wants to be a mediocre artist, do they? I mean, does anyone really want to be a mediocre anything at the end of the day?

And with that comes fear of failure, and fear of mediocrity, and fear of just not measuring up. Or of just not being that artist you thought you were or that you set out to be.

Then all of a sudden I'll be thumbing through a magazine and see a promotion for a recently published book. And it's a book with a story that sounds, to me, absolutely cliche or terribly laughable or painfully unrealistic. And yet...wait for it...

Somebody published it.

So um, why can't I do that? Why do I spend so much of my precious energy fearing failure and worrying about being good enough when - clearly - there are plenty of people who are "good enough" to get published? And why do I think this way when I'm a professional writer by day, and perhaps actually have a good shot at producing something good?

These are my Monday musings as I pitter patter around my house, and as I look at my author website (which needs to be redone - oh, technology, you imploded on yourself). And as I look at my workload, which needs to be better managed so I can have time for the things that matter to me.

And let's not forget that little manuscript file here on my computer that is screaming at me. You know what it's saying? "Work on me, you stupid human. I've been sitting here for months."

I'm Itching, Itching!

I have about 10 minutes to write this in between client work. Because a computer program decided to break (this is what they do best, right?). Huzzah for a breather!

So let's get to the point. I'm itching, y'all. Itching! I was trying to see if ITCHING would go along with the Mickey Mouse song so we could all sing it out loud together. But it won't, so I'll move on. I'm itching to write again.

The trouble is that I've been struggling to find the brainpower to write anything at all after working such long hours. Ok, *cough*, let's be honest...I haven't written anything in a long while. It looks like my last blog post in here was in March of this year.

Eek!

I think I'm the type of writer who needs breaks sometimes. And occasionally, very long breaks (months). But then I come back and I'm ready to go. Ready to pump out words. Ready to make it flow.

And right now I'm itching so much that I'm taking a measly 10 minutes to drum my keys frantically and write about how much I'm itching to write.

Ok so we're at about the two minute mark. That leaves me about three more minutes to say anything else I want to say before I need to spend the last five minutes editing.

Here are my other random thoughts:

• The title of my book needs to change. I don't know what it's going to be yet, but it's going to change. It ain't workin' for me anymore.
• The new medication I have to take makes my brain mush sometimes. It's hard to find the right words on occasion when I talk. I'm hoping this doesn't translate to my writing. That would be a tragedy. Although I think I shall survive.
• My freelance business is exceptionally successful, although I'm probably spending less than 50% of my time writing these days. Which is good and bad. Good because writing is exhausting. Bad because either way, I'm tired.

So there you have it. I think I have satisfied my itch for now.

But only for now.

Stay tuned, because I'm going to make a spectacular comeback, an exceptional return, an awesome re-entry! Ok, that's a bit of a hyperbole. I'll be back...soon...I hope. :)

Now, time to edit.

Writing Is...Exhausting

Hello, I'm a writer! And I'm exhausted. How are you?

Writing is a really tiring pursuit. After spending almost two years now writing full-time (not that I didn't write in corporate, but I didn't always have writing work depending on the day or the job), I can officially say that I'm exhausted.

Now this isn't really a rant. It's more of an acknowledgement, you know? Or maybe a recognition of something I'm discovering about myself. A recognition that I got so tired that I made myself sick and I'm still recovering two weeks later. A recognition that I've got some good things going, and that I need to find more balance, too.

I'm really glad that I've got a batch of clients who understand how tough it is to write well, and who pay me appropriately. But I'm also glad that my main client gives me non-writing tasks to do so that my brain can breathe a little bit.

You know how when you have to think really hard about something for a long time, and then at some point your brain starts fogging up, and then you want to go zone out in front of the TV for like six hours? That's sort of how I feel every day. 

The process of learning about a product or service, learning what the client wants, learning what their client wants (if I'm working with an agency), learning about the industry and target audience, and then churning it all into something readable is like running a marathon sometimes.

And I don't want to whine about my job. I love my job. I'm just recognizing that trying to write all day every day for the next 30+ years may not be sustainable. Because my brain is going to slow down over time. And my energy will, too.

Which is why I'm really excited that I've found some other ways to make money, so that I can diversify it up a bit. Will I always write? Absolutely. Writing is just what I do. And it's what I will always do.

But will I always write full-time? No. I don't think so. I'll be throwing some yoga and photography into the mix as much as I can afford to. And probably hanging on to my really awesome main client for dear life. ;)

Abandoning the Book

I always thought that to be a "real" writer you had to write books. Like the ultimate end goal was to produce something bound together in paper, with a defined story arc, of a significant length that could be revered or hated.

And so of course as a writer I've tried to write books. Three times, to be exact. And I do think I will finally finish the one I'm working on at some point. But beyond that, the truth is that I honestly don't know if I can write books. Or if I want to write books.

In fact, I don't think that I do. Which still bemoans me to admit.

Today I was lying on the couch curled up in a ball, with my throat hurting from a bacterial infection and my stomach hurting from the antibiotic I had taken. And of course it's in these unthinking kinds of moments that the "stuff" hiding in our minds comes to the forefront.

My next book had already been formed in my head for a few months and I was pretty excited about it. But this afternoon I realized I was choosing the wrong medium. A book? No. I wanted to write a book because I wanted to be a writer. But really, I just want to write. And I don't think I want to write a book about this.

And so I picked up my cell phone without really moving from the fetal position, and I went to my favorite domain website (GoDaddy) and purchased a domain. And now the title of my next book is the title of a new website that I own.

www.WeAreYogis.com

I'm not sure where this is going to take me yet - maybe nowhere, to be honest. Because on any given day I have a number of fleeting ideas that come through my brain. But the fact that my latest book idea isn't a book anymore is actually OK with me.

Because you know what I'm realizing? That I don't have to be like everyone else. That I don't have to conform to any standard set by society or by history or by any other arbitrary entity. That I am a writer just by writing, anywhere and in any format. And that is enough.

Writing Fatigue

Admittedly, it's been over a month since I posted on this blog. And as I squint my eyes and fight the blurriness that keeps sneaking up on me, I want to write this post because I miss it. Because I've been totally consumed by freelance work since about late October.

I'm experiencing writing fatigue.

I think writing fatigue is different than exhaustion. When you're fatigued, you're tired. You want to rest a lot. But at the end of it all you still get up and go and do what you have to do, and you somehow manage to get stuff done. Whereas when you're exhausted, everything shuts down and all you want to do is sleep or stare at the wall.

I do experience writing exhaustion on and off, yes. Sometimes it's at certain times of day, sometimes it's on the weekends when I'm coming off of a crazy work week. But the exhaustion fades away and the fatigue takes its place. And then sometimes a flurry of excitement and energy bumbles in and I'm on fire for a few hours.

And then I'm back to writing fatigue.

But really I'm ok with it right now. No, I can't work on my book manuscript. No, I don't have much mental energy left to work on my blogs. Especially when I've now taken up photography and have started teaching yoga again. But I know it'll come.

There is a season for everything in life. And my current season is a freelance season. It's a making money season, so that we can be comfortable moving into the years ahead. It's an establishing myself and my career season. It's a season that will pass, that will become a new one over the natural course of time.

So I'm embracing it. And writing up this little post, too. And now my writing exhaustion is taking back over, so off I go. Until my next break, or until a new season begins.

You Can Never Have Too Much Writing...Er, I Don't Think?

I must be crazy, because I just started another blog. And not this blog that you see before you, no. A different blog in a totally different place. A blog on my shiny new yoga website (www.elizabethhaynesyoga.com) that I created yesterday, since I finally realized I'm ready to get back into teaching.

Sometimes I ask myself, "Self, hey you...yes you. Pay attention. Say, self, do you think you can have too much writing in your life?"

I go through periods where I can't seem to get enough of it. Like right now. Where I want to write about anything and everything that crosses my mind as important. Or reach out to people through the internet by turning my words into gestures, or hugs, or waves. Or just birth a new writing project because it feels awesome to create something new (like a new blog).

And then I have moments where I just want to run and hide in the corner, curling my legs up under my fuzzy blanket and hunching down over a good book. Maybe fiction this time, to get away from reality. To enter into a colorful (or colorless) new world and explore the minds of made up characters.

I suppose it's ok to have too much writing sometimes as long as you like what you're writing about. And as long as you're inspired. Because then, honestly, it doesn't take all that long to write down whatever it is you have to say. It's like picking up a pen and watching its ink flow out - smoothly, without any hiccups, without getting clogged, without running low. And then you lift your pen off the page and find a cohesive "something" sitting before you.

Pen, lifted.

And then you move on to the next thing.