The Calm Before the Storm, Fall Semester Edition

One week till the beginning of the semester meetings start, and I’m wearing pajamas that say “Pajamas All Day” on them. I think it’s a fitting tribute to the end of summer and the beginning of a busy fall semester.

To be honest, I worked on a class this morning. Honestly, I didn’t have to do the work until spring semester, but I worked on it. I am so ready for the semester to start that I have nothing left to do except maybe clean my office. Maybe.

I found two new coffee mugs for fall in my mailbox, and I think I know who got them for me (Shelly?) That was a pleasant surprise for beginning the semester.

I’m ahead for writing projects, having finished two books since March and gone through at least one editing pass on three. I have written three short stories over the summer. I’m looking for more inspiration for some stories that do not relate to the Hidden in Plain Sight universe. But today, I’m not looking too hard.

Back to Writing

I have arrived back home after a week of road tripping to New York Hope and back, and after a 14-hour nap, I am back to writing. I have a short story to finish, and then maybe I will start another short story.

I’m writing short stories lately because I’m all noveled out, and because I need some shorter compositions for entering for publication and contests. The last story I had published was in Fall 2023 by Flying Ketchup Press, Inner Child. This story answers the perennial question, “What if my inner child is a brat?”

I need some inspiration for short stories. Perhaps a trip to Starbucks, but not today. I’m still recovering from the trip. That’s life after 60.

Back Home

About my trip, all I have to say is “Everything that could go wrong, did go wrong, but I presented my poster and got home”. It involved paying for another ticket to keep my husband and I on the same flight home, a delay causing us to miss our connecting flight, and me passing out the morning of my presentation. And I caught up on my sleep all day yesterday, which my psychiatrist would caution against, but the late nights traveling took a toll on me.

Now to get back into writing. I had a weird dream which almost turned into a book, but I thought it would be too cheesy because the fantasy angle was a bit thin and there was a vampire. And a court full of potential victims under a geas to stay and not kill the vampire. And the chosen girl revenging her father masquerading as a adenoidal, unintelligent servant girl. And at least three romance tropes: fake relationship, enemies to friends, and time travel. I don’t know if I could write her without her becoming a Mary Sue, at least in part because she’s the only one without the geas. And there were Edsels. And jousting. Did I mention the vampire? Not all dreams should become stories. (Spoiler: She does not fall in love with the vampire. The vampire is the bad guy, not just misunderstood.)

I’m back from the break feeling somewhat discombobulated, which is how air travel leaves me. I traveled through an airport once that had a “recombobulation room”, and I now wish all airports had them. San Francisco had a “quiet room” which I wished I had time to spend in. Now I need to be recombobulated before I write again. The goal is to do Starbucks and writing tomorrow. And to luxuriate in doing nothing today.

But First, Rest

I’m on Spring Break, and my brain’s on vacation. What I should do today — writing. Writing something deep on this blog and editing my book. What I am doing — writing something fluffy on this blog and falling asleep sitting up. Quite a feat, yet I keep managing it.

My body’s dropping a subtle hint that I need rest. I posted an article the other day about the different kinds of rest, but I don’t recall it pointing out how to tell when one needs rest. I suppose falling asleep sitting up might be a sign.

Photo by Ihsan Adityawarman on Pexels.com

It’s Spring Break. If I don’t rest now, when will I?

It’s my vacation. If I don’t have fun now, when will I?

I have to write this book. If I don’t do it now, when will I?

It occurs to me that rest trumps writing and fun because I will not enjoy either if I’m tired. This excellent deduction makes me grouchy because I want to have fun (even though we can’t go anywhere for Break because Richard has to work). I want to make progress in my writing. However, my body wants a nap.

I think it’s time to take a nap and promise myself I will do something more lively when I get up. There’s an additional chapter I have to add to the book, and I have a bunch of JD Robb to read for fun. But first, rest.

Rest

Rest gets a bad name in American society. Work culture demands long hours, and there is a push to work more hours without paying attention to the diminishing returns of productivity with overwork. We go places on weekends to shop or be entertained. We go on vacation and come back wishing we had a vacation from our vacations.

Sometimes we just need to rest. According to this article, there are seven types of rest:

Creative rest
Mental rest
Physical rest
Social rest
Emotional rest
Sensory rest
Spiritual rest

Sleeping and doing nothing are not the solutions to most of these needs for rest. For example, creative rest involves resting your drive for creativity by exposure to other people’s creativity and walking in nature, while social rest means restricting your time with people. Spiritual rest doesn’t seem to involve a break from spirituality, so there’s inconsistency in the model.

I am going to find some time to rest this afternoon. Right now I’m listening to classicalelectronica (not joking; that’s the playlist name) and taking a break from the novel (although we’ll see how long that lasts). I’ll spend the day with just Richard and not embroil myself in anything overly emotional; maybe practice mindfulness. But the idea of these types of rest is that we distribute them throughout our day, with brief breaks for each. This will take me a bit of thought.

How can I do that and subvert the time paradigm mentioned above? One way is to take my free time seriously and not let work encroach upon it. Some employers have the nerve to call this “quiet quitting”, when in actuality it’s “not working for free”. I’m lucky; my boss is a professor of recreation and wants me to preserve my free time; others are not so lucky. The second is to look at what types of rest I neglect and plan for those. I have focused a lot on physical rest; I have neglected spiritual rest for a while because of my struggles with spirituality and religion.

I’ve written enough about resting; I think it’s time for me to rest.

Misplaced guilt

My break ends

My break time is ending. I have meetings tomorrow and Monday, and then next Thursday is my first day of class next Wednesday. I’ve readied myself for the Spring Semester over the break, finished proofing and publishing a novel (Gaia’s Hands), and fixed another book via ProWritingAid.

Do you know what else I did? A lot of absolutely nothing!

And now for the misplaced guilt

Here’s why I feel guilty every year:

I haven’t spent every waking moment (and in fact have spent virtually no waking moments) working for Spring semester.
If I had children, I would spend a lot of time on them. Instead, I write and proofread and rest a lot. Even the Pope says I should get some children for a full life (This coming from a man who stayed celibate all his life? Ha!)
People don’t perceive taking care of myself with a mental illness (bipolar II) as legit as resting because of a physical illness (I know, I know, it’s just as legit, but I don’t always believe it.)

Enough of this

I have to remind myself that I am the primary earner of the house, plus I write novels on the side as a hobby, and I am going to need some rest. Plenty of rest. I might as well save my energy for tomorrow and Monday and all the days full of COVID and student requests.

Time to rest now.

Recharging

On the fifth day of my vacation, I’m officially at the point where I don’t want to do anything but sit on the couch and binge-watch Babylon 5. This is unfortunate because I’ve been watching that with my husband and we’re two episodes from the end. So what would I binge-watch? I could watch Dune again, or Shang-Chi. (Notice a nerdy trend here?)

I don’t do nothing very well. I easily get restless and irritable. But I can’t motivate myself to do what I need to do right now, which is to edit It Takes Two to Kringle, possibly because the only reason I need to do it now is that I think I should. It’s due for uploading onto Kindle in October, and so I have plenty of time for revisions and the like.

Maybe it’s time to rest and recharge. What that looks like, I don’t know, because I don’t do nothing very well.

Doing Nothing

The last few days

I’m facing the last few days before my fall semester starts, and I don’t want to do anything. No writing, no advertising, no anything but binge-watch British medical documentaries.

I may just indulge this need to do nothing. I really haven’t taken breaks from writing for about seven years. Between writing and editing, I’ve been writing for seven years. Almost every day.

A few days won’t hurt. Maybe I’ll get some inspiration, or another book ready for queries.

Or, at least, some rest.

(Anyone putting bets on when I’ll quit my break?)

A Time for Nothing

I’m done putting together my classes for Spring, which was my task for the winter break. Now what? My mind is all for relaxing and hiding from my work in progress, but I’ll probably do something with that during break.

I feel like I could sleep forever. I just got up and I’m already wanting to go back to bed. I don’t know if this is latent depression or I’m just so relieved to be done with the semester that I’m catching up on time without thinking.

The semester must have been far worse than I’m registering. I tend to be stoic and plow through the semester with blinders on, not stopping to lament much (other than my lamenting about lack of writers’ retreats in these pages).

And now, because of COVID, I have no choice but to relax. No visit to my dad and sister, no going out shopping, maybe a stop at the Board Game Cafe if it’s not crowded, but …

So I’m working on relaxing.