Cool Down

2018 Goal Update
Books read: 27
Words on BRUSHSTROKES: 5900/? (probably 80-85K)

Remember that last week of March when I wrote about 5,000 words in that one week?

Yeah, that didn't happen in the last couple weeks. I didn't even manage to get in last week's blog post (um... sorry about that).

I expect productivity to fluctuate. I know some weeks I'll get more done than others. There are natural dips.

That's not what's been going on.

I've mentioned before that I'm in the process of switching jobs. Adjunct life has been interesting, but it's time for me to move on to work that's more reliable (and comes with better pay and benefits--I love you, academia, but you've got to pay your workers what they're worth). I found a new job that's pretty great and that's willing to wait until the end of the semester to bring me on full-time, so long as I work part-time hours until then.

It's a good deal. Except for one thing: it means that I, right now, have four part-time jobs.

It's been an exhausting couple of weeks. I'm not great at the whole work-life balance thing to begin with, and adding another job to the mix has taken its toll. I've been burning the candle at every conceivable end, and it's drained my writing mojo.

This four-job situation is temporary--at the end of the semester, just a couple of weeks from now, my three teaching jobs end and I'll be down to one full-time job with normal hours. A few low-productivity writing weeks isn't so bad a trade off in the long run. Predictable hours and a decrease in the emotional labor I'll have to do on a daily basis will free up more brain space for creative work. In light of that, a few low-productivity writing weeks aren't a bad trade.

But, oh man, do I feel awful about it.

I'm sort of a slow-producer when it comes to words. Sure, I can crank out over a thousand on a day when I'm on a deadline, but in general it's a slower process for me. Since most of my writer friends are more prolific, I'm pretty insecure about my tiny daily wordcounts under the best of circumstances. It's not as bad when I'm able to squeeze in several writing days in a week. The cumulative wordcount lessens the feeling of inadequacy.

The past two weeks, though, I've been lucky to get in a single 250 word day. A two-week wordcount of fewer than 500 words is a gut-punch.

One of the ways that my brain lies to me is that it constantly tells me that I'm lazy. No matter how much I get done or how many hours of work I put in, there's a voice in my head that's telling me I'm not trying hard enough. I know that this is objectively not true, but it's hard to ignore that voice in times like this when I'm not getting words on the page.

It's a struggle to keep my expectations reasonable this week. There's only so much time in a day, and I only have so much mental space. If my productivity is low now, that's not so bad. This overwhelming situation is temporary, and once things settle, I should be able to get back on my feet--maybe not back to that end-of-March-I-had-a-whole-week-off level, but to somewhere reasonable.

In the meantime, I guess I have to take some time. Allow myself to recharge. Write what I can, when I can, but not get caught up in the numbers.