Ode To A Day Off

My weekend feels wasted, creativity-wise.

Don’t get me wrong: it was a good couple of days. Saturday, I went to the baby shower for one of my best friends, and I wrote quite a bit (for me). Sunday, I helped my grandmother move and wrote significantly less.

It’s not that I didn’t do anything creative, but I didn’t do what needed doing. Specifically, I have a short story to edit, due later this week. And I just don’t have the brain to be working on it now.

This frustrates me to no end.

Days off are important. Back when my day job had me off as many days as I worked, that wasn’t such a big deal. Now with only two “free” days a week, I have to be extra careful about how I use them.

My weekend wasn’t even terribly packed, but I’m still exhausted and burned out. Part of that likely has to do with not knowing when I’ll have any proper time off in the next few weeks.

Make no mistake: I am totally whining in this post. Sorry.

The point is that time off is important. Vitally important. Time when the only expectations placed on you are whatever you’ve chosen to place on yourself. It’s time to recoup and regroup. If we don’t do that, we end up too strung out and burned out to accomplish the things we really want to do. Time off — whatever form that takes — is necessary, and I am currently feeling the strain of not having it.

But I need to figure out a way around that in the next day or two in order to meet this deadline. I may have to go internet-silent. (I’ve been doing that a lot lately, and it’s wonderful.) One way or another, I will find a way to get this story done. It would just be nice to have it done already, instead of scrambling until the last minute.

This is why I guard my time so selfishly that sometimes months will pass without me seeing and spending time with people I love. It’s the part I hate most about working a full-time day job.

Which perhaps makes it a bit ridiculous that I auditioned the other day for a summer production of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar. Maybe I’m a touch masochistic.

Do you have any strategies for when you’ve overreached yourself? Please share! I need all the help I can get.

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