Clearing My Head

As some of you may have noticed, I've been away. A road trip to LA and a plane trip to Phoenix, of all places. But that's not really what I mean. I've been taking a break from writing, which has been welcome but unintentional.

When I finished my first draft of my novel in early October, I felt as if I'd just done a marathon, and I had, of sorts. I had just completed 100 pages in less than two months. That's the fastest I've ever written - long term. I found myself mentally and creatively exhausted. So, I ended up neglecting everything, including my journal, which I've been very diligent about for months now.

I have a very dear friend, who will recognize herself in this simple advice, "Take care of yourself and give yourself time." I took her advice, offered long ago for a completely different situation, and now I find myself raring to go again. I'm half-way through my first rewrite and on schedule to begin marketing my book when the new year begins.

Not only am I ready for rewriting, but this weekend, inspiration came to me again, (or Shirley for those of you who remember my muse's name)and I'm working on a short story as well as being driven to blog again.

I think sometimes we pushed ourselves to do too much in too short a time frame and end up not doing anything well, and perhaps more importantly, not enjoying life. Time is an abstract notion that we tie ourselves to, chained to minutes and hours that have no real meaning in our lives.

Forgive me, I've been reading Eckart Tolle's book "A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose." This is a fabulous book, but very difficult read, which has me re-examining everything. I highly recommend it, but don't strive to read and understand everything right away. At first I had to take numerous breaks, in order to absorb the very deep insinuations about how we live and what is reality. A good bookmark and ten minutes of quiet time daily should get you through it nicely in a month or two. As you'll see when you read it, there's no real hurry to most things in life - so why rush to the end of a book that will give you lots to think about on nearly every page.

And please forgive me my absence - but I'm back now. I'd love to read your comments on this blog once in a while. There are lots of you that read it, at last count about 200 readers, but few comments. Feel free to disagree too.

Wishing you a lovely respite from whatever you have overdone lately!