One thing working in corporate America has going for it is that there are some boundaries around hours of work. You might do emails and text messages from early morning through the evening. You might make revisions on a big presentation while watching television. But the majority of the time you shut off work at a decent time in the evening and chill.

Writing is a different kind of master. If you’re creating new material, you work as long as the words and thoughts flow. If you’re marketing and promoting, you research and read and dig through websites and go to bookstores and meet with people for as long as it takes. If you’re doing both at the same time, heaven help you.

It can all get too involved until one day you realize you’ve listened to the same playlist for two or three weeks straight, that all there is to eat in the house is cereal and crackers and a bag of cheap chocolate candy, that the reason you’re wearing workout clothes is that is easier to sleep in something loose. The flowers across the room are wilted in a vase without water and family members are making comments about how you could use a break. You agree that you could use a break, just not the same kind they are suggesting.

When I worked in the corporate world writing happened late at night or on weekends or days off. If there were other things to do at those times, writing slipped in priority. Sometimes writing slipped far down the list of priorities for weeks and months until I became a she-wolf searching for something to rip apart. Suppressed creativity can do that to some of us.

Today I took off. The house is a mess. There isn’t a whole lot to eat in the kitchen. Clean clothes haven’t traveled from basement to the bedroom. But the air was cool and the sun bright. I spent time outside with friends, drank root beer out of a frosty mug, and took a nap when most people were eating dinner. And wrote this from the heart.  No links or big moments. A writer has to rest.