Rest

When you meet resistance, you can either force your way through, or back off until you get your energy back.

If you're the type of person that pays close attention, you might have noticed that even though I've been pretty consistent about posting a lot lately, this is the first one I put up since last Friday. Why is that? Well, it has to do with vacations.

Actually, having three days off in a row from my job was just a happy coincidence of scheduling. On Sunday I set out to read an entire book, not to mention beta read about 20 pages, and to follow up on my hunt for a cover artist. I e-mailed one artist, got halfway through the book, and didn't beta read anything. On Monday, my goal was to finish the things I wanted to do on Sunday. I managed to read another quarter of the book, but that was it.

Before long, I realized what was happening. I was trying to get things done on days that simply were meant to be lazy. For the rest of Monday, I just relaxed. Watched TV. Napped. Played games. Maybe it was a waste of time, but I felt like I was recovering from something. Yesterday I just did a little cleaning and then relaxed again, and then I was completely ready for today.

This morning I went back to work. Conditions were tougher than they've been in a while, but I pushed through. After that, I came home and got started on that beta reading after all. And, of course, I finally managed to get a blog post done.

I'll admit, I haven't exactly accomplished greatness in the last week. Still, the downward spiral of productivity has come back to an upward direction. It seems like the reason for that is the time I spent resting. It's fair to say that such patience is sometimes what we need to balance ourselves.

Just don't take this advice as a license to be lazy all the time, please.