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Pause for a shutdown

Whew. It’s been quite a while since I’ve written. Anything, really. Except for my journal. Thankfully, I’ve kept up with that. I started a couple of posts for my blog but was unable to finish them. At a certain point, each attempt became outdated, so I would start another.

My day job as a Children’s Librarian at a public library is stressful, compounded by the fact that we’re currently operating with too few staff. For day-to-day needs, we do well. But throw in illness, and we struggle to keep things running. As I was preparing for the two-month Summer Reading Program, my biggest event of the year, I found myself frequently eating lunch an hour and a half late while at my desk responding to emails and tweaking the budget.

For several months early in the year, as I worked feverishly on my book, I had been walking around laundry and clutter. A counter full of dirty pans was the norm. And those pans sat sometimes for several days, nagging at me, as I devoted much of my time to writing.

The stress was building. As everything piled up and with no end in sight, I finally hit a point where I just shut down. I literally did nothing when I wasn’t at work or church.

Nothing.

Seriously, what’s the point?

And then things went from bad to worse. I came down with Covid. Again.

After the first few days of sleeping, I selected some heavy-duty options from my arsenal of natural treatments. That did the trick. I still felt a little fatigued, but I was able to move about all day. Just at a slower pace than normal.

I binge-watched a few episodes of The Home Edit and got to work. After a couple of days of editing, categorizing, and containing, I felt a glimmer of hope beginning to surface again. Not only had I decreased the mounds of paperwork that had built up, but the house was also more manageable.

Of course, then I rolled right into the beginning of my Summer Reading Program. Now that my desire to get back into a writing habit had returned, my available time had vanished. This past week alone I finalized plans for a survival competition and typed up a corresponding instruction and wildflower identification page to go with it at 2:30 am when I couldn’t sleep.

My boss asked how I was doing.  “Tired”, I said, as I explained that June is a marathon every year, not a sprint. I must push through to the Fourth of July. After that everything slows down a bit. Only a bit, but enough to catch my breath.

One of my favorite quotes is from Winston Churchill: “Success is going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm.” I need to be reminded of that regularly. If I can hang on to hope when I haven’t written anything for nearly two months, I will be ok. And thankfully, my writing coach Molly encouraged me with the reminder that I take vacations from my library job, so taking a vacation from my writing work is no different.

I have made it to the holiday weekend. I am enjoying a well-deserved break and will soon have more time for writing.

Have a blessed Independence Day!
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