Overwork and a helpful waste of time

When I work too hard for too long, I can end up with a bit of a crash. Sometimes it means I don’t have energy to do anything else. Sometimes it means I have a lower threshold before I cry at the drop of the hat or let anger show more easily.

And sometimes it means taking a nap. Naps are bad because I have insomnia and a nap can throw me into a two or three week cycle of disrupted sleep.

I’m at about ten months of running too hard. It’s slowed down my progress on everything.

I haven’t made much progress on my recent main writing project lately. Between overwork, travel, and a new schedule, it hasn’t been going well. The project was originally going to be like 4K words. It was just supposed to be a challenge to see whether I could write something I wasn’t really a fan of. It’s 17K words now and I think I can finish it up in another 3K. At my current rate on it, that could take six months.

On the other hand, I started something else on Wednesday and put an easy 1K a day on it. Being a writer with a day job and mental illness makes these word counts pretty shiny. I’m not sure why this newer project is easier to write. Maybe because I didn’t pick it as a challenge. Maybe because I know it’s a series that could go on indefinitely.

Maybe because it’s new and I haven’t been looking at a languishing word count for months.

Neither project is usable. They’re just a nice detour while I get my act together and figure out what my next project will be. So maybe it’s ok I’m not getting anywhere with one and the other has kept me two hours past my bedtime.

I’ve never felt like it was a waste of time and effort to write music I had no plans to share. I’m not sure why I ever felt like writing stories for just the fun of writing stories was a waste.

Maybe the escape I’ve been looking for and haven’t found because all my PTO got ate by demons¹ … is between pages I can’t share with anyone. Maybe that’s how I rebuild what I’ve lost over the past year.

I don’t know.

At this point it doesn’t matter. Both projects are more writing than I’ve done since the end of my last relationship. More writing maybe than I’ve done since the start of that relationship.

Have to start somewhere and here’s as good a place as any.