breaking the break

When you’ve taken a break from something – whether deliberately or not – it can sometimes feel tough to re-start. I think this is often true for writers.

Not all. Some people churn out words, have no problems with motivation or discipline and even when they are time-poor, squeeze writing into that one small patch of available time. Kudos to them.

Very commendable.

Not very me.

It’s true of this too – writing this blog post, breaking the blog silence. My blog has periods of dormancy. There’s nothing wrong with that. It is my blog, after all, there is nothing that says I have to keep it up. But then I do have ideas, but am stopped by some psychological hurdle. The habit of writing has been broken. In a way, I have formed a habit of not doing it. My brain has adapted the other way. And now I need to break the break, as it were!

The worst thing I could do to manage this is what we often find our selves doing when we have dropped the ball or not done what we meant to or wanted to do. And that is to feel guilty.

Guilt is a paralysing agent, so it is hardly going to help with that breaking of the break. It may not be guilt per se. Regret. A sense of failure or disappointment. And how ever much we know people don’t mind, understand, encourage us, etc … we mind. It’s our own disappointment we are managing. (Again, disappointment might be too strong a word. But there is something there making it feel harder. Those habit-solidifying synaptic pathways have broken down a bit.)

The way of release, I find, is the way of acceptance. Yes, I find this a bit hard. Yes, I have not done this for ages. Yes, it makes me feel a certain way.

Yes. THIS IS SO. AND THAT’S OKAY.

So easy to focus on what we haven’t done. Yes, that’s true. So easy to lose our way for days, weeks, months, even years. Yes, that’s true.

And very human.

No point in comparing with those super-achievers, the ones who dismiss the idea of anything like writers’ block (bloggers’ block?!), or who ‘push on through it’. They try to encourage us with their fortitude and accidentally convey disdain for our difficulties. It’s usually not intentional. But it can feel like that.

I’ve said it somewhere before – here? In one of my books? (Or is it just something that lurks behind a lot of my writing?) – What you find easy, someone else will find hard. Accepting that fact goes a long way towards becoming a better encourager.

Acceptance brings release in so many ways.

Here’s to breaking the break…