Life Happens

I did something strange today: I read a particular ezine for the first time in, oh, about 2 years. I've subscribed to it for a long time, and I used to read it weekly — it was just part of my routine. But, along with keeping up with other kid-lit blogs, implementing concrete plans for growing my business, completing numerous household projects, spending quality time with friends and family, coordinating the final steps of "settling in" to a house/community, reading that leaning tower of adult lit I'm interested in, continually challenging my culinary skills, teaching my now-old dog a few new tricks . . . and so on and on and on . . . I let it slide.

Seems like a small thing, doesn't it? The reading of the newsletter, that is. Yet far more important activities had taken its place. Taken the place of everything for a while. As I hinted a couple of posts ago, I'm ready to stop the "coasting." Ready to move on, as it were. But in the particular life circumstance I'm experiencing, it's hard to know how to move on. All you can really do is work on it until you make it happen (or it happens by sheer dumb luck).

In keeping with my desire to keep most of my non-writing life out of the blog, I'm not going to get specific about the life circumstance I so vaguely mentioned above. Yet it's impossible to NOT have your personal life affect your work on some level, don't you think? It strikes me that this is especially true when you're a writer. For me, anyway, writing full-time takes a greater level of consistent emotional investment than, say, working as a bank teller (something I did in my young adulthood). So when practically ALL of your ever-lovin' emotional energy is being spent on people/situations you consider more important than work, getting said work done becomes difficult. Burdensome, even. So does the simple act of writing for fun. And that's no fun and no fair!

The good news is that I'm back to possessing more available head space. That means I'm slowly getting back to my fully engaged working/writing persona. Not that I ever stopped working or writing — or that I wasn't able to perform for pay as needed. But writing wasn't driving me in the same way it usually does. Instead it was riding in the trunk, stuffed in a duffel bag, waiting for me to pull it out and fluff it up after my long, crazy road trip to Not Entirely Sure Where, Yet.

If any of that makes sense, then you, too, know that Life Happens. And today, I'm going out on a limb to say that I'm glad it does. After all, who among us can't use a little fodder for future fiction?