Time To Breathe

I don’t take enough time off.

Which is more than a bit ironic, given how much I twit my husband about checking email and working from home.

The great thing about writing from home is that I can do it anywhere, any time, in the cracks of regular life.

That’s also the worst thing about it. Because I start trying to fill every crack with productive time. Even my down time is spent folding clothes or scrapbooking–I never allow myself TV time unless I am doing something productive.

This weekend we went camping overnight, and I left my computer at home. It was harder to make that decision than I would like to admit. Early morning is my best time, and to be camped beside the river, in the quiet, with only the tree frogs and the insects for company? I knew I was giving up a precious commodity.

But I also knew I needed a break. The thrill of writing a new manuscript has settled into a rhythm of high motivation and determination, but I also feel an unsettling certainty that I’ve got all my eggs in one basket right now, and I need to be writing music and essays and nonfiction pieces. Things that, yanno. Pay. Not to mention promoting the things I already have out there. But all that nibbles at the edge of my enjoyment, and this week, as I’ve been fighting off a cold, I realized I was teetering on the edge of burnout.

So I left the computer at home.

And I had trouble getting to sleep, so in the chill of a fifty-degree morning beside the Missouri River, I stayed in my sleeping bag until the kids got us up at, well, (cough-cough-six-thirty).

I didn’t miss a moment of our first real campout as a family, and for that I’m very grateful.