How to Get Back On Track After Extravagant Laziness

The one or two visitors I get here each day might have noticed that I haven’t posted in a while. That’s because I decided I would take a break to watch the Olympics. Yes, the Olympics were held this year. I know by now it feels like a lifetime ago. I really had an awesome post idea entitled “The Olympic Pause.” It was going to be so timely and inspirational. But then I got off track and stayed in my comfortable state of off-the-track-ness. So the Olympics are no longer relevant. I’ll have to post about something else now. I promise to not turn this into one of those posts where the blogger posts about not posting. Those posts are like puns gone wrong.

I want to talk about how I got back on track. For now I am on track and feeling … okay. Being lazy was easier, after all.

First to get myself on track, I had to realize I was actually off of it. That’s easy with writing: pages stop accumulating and the story just sits at that last scene that you didn’t know how to write. Shortly before I went on hibernation, I was celebrating progress. That was the first step on the road to the Third Ring of Hell. What’s a celebration without a little reward? What’s a good reward? How about a break! That’s how I found myself enjoying the gluttonous joy of sloth.

Knowing I had a problem, I had to take action. Shame worked to galvanize me. Don’t I really want to make it as a writer? How is that possible without writing? The obvious answers got me back in front of the computer. But good habits are use it or lose it propositions. Having taken so much time off, I had lost the discipline and the habits that have kept me running for over a year.  To get back in shape, I had to do more than just “get back on track.”

I re-read what I had already written, and it looked good. Didn’t I want to finish it? At least I was reading my writing, rather than wasting time on Reddit.
I fooled myself. Good thing about being such a dull witted guy is that I’m easy to fool. So I used that. I planned to write just 20 minutes and then play World of Warcraft. I ended up doing more writing instead.
I set expanding word count goals until I was back to the level I was at before I plummeted from the track.
I renewed my interesting in writing by reading something new. I get pumped for writing by reading others and seeing how the author kicked ass and made a great story. This time I read Neil Gaiman’s American Gods. I’m not done with it yet, but it is pure awesome.  It’s the tonic I needed right now.

Those four steps helped me recover from a serious bout of “I don’t want to do this”. Basically, I eased back into it. Nothing about it was rocket science. But if you should find yourself needing to get back on track, try something similar for whatever it is you are doing. The key for me was to realize I wasn’t doing what I truly wanted, and just got excited about doing it again.

I’m doing the same with blogging. To get back on track here, I’ve promised myself that I only have to post up about every ten days with something interesting. That’s a whole lot easier to wrap my head around than telling myself I’ve got to create something twice a week!  Besides, you should only get back on one track at a time. No need to hurt yourself doing too much at once!