I gave myself March off blogging. Which seems like it might be a weird thing to do – to take time off a thing that is clearly optional. But, I live by the schedule. So every week writing is not optional, there’s a deadline, because otherwise I am not sure I would ever consider things to be finished.
Last year this experiment didn’t work so well, or at least I didn’t feel like it worked that well. This year I feel like it went better – in part because I changed what I wanted to get out of it. I had this idea that I needed to rebalance inputs vs outputs, which I did. I read more, some non-fiction, quite a few novels, and notably less trashy novels than has been my wont. I finally finally reviewed my book chapter one last time (a task that had been hanging over me for months). I made notes about things I want to write about, wrote some drafts, spent time on talks I need to prep for May. I replied to email, and I filed expenses. And I did a lot of Duolingo. My Spanish has noticeably improved over the past month, despite spending it outside of Colombia.
I feel refreshed and recharged and excited to write again – on a new schedule of 2x a week instead of 3x a week.
And more than ever I believe in the utility of stepping away from habits for a while, to miss them, and to consider why I have them.