I Didn't Write Yesterday

“Sometimes it's important to work for that pot of gold. But other times it's essential to take time off and to make sure that your most important decision in the day simply consists of choosing which color to slide down on the rainbow.”

Douglas Pagels

“It takes time to live. Like any work of art, life needs to be thought about.”

Albert Camus

I didn’t write yesterday because my Muse told me to take the day off.  This surprised me.  I thought I was supposed to write every day.  Steven Pressfield and Stephen King write every day, without fail.  So isn’t that what I should be doing?  Isn’t that the law for writers?  This wasn’t the Enemy telling me to not write; it was my Muse.  Why would she say something like this?

My Muse told me to take the day off for the following reasons:

·      I had a very impacted work schedule yesterday and she knew I would be stressed and tired.

·      Writing a blog would have created more stress.

·      Writing a blog would have lessened my sense of responsibility to do my job as well as I could.

·      Writing a blog would have lessened my ability to enjoy the present.

·      My life is not about writing.  My life is about living and living well.  This means taking care of myself.   This means loving myself.

·      Although life is made up of many small choices made over time, one small choice made one time probably won’t make a difference.

·      It turned out I was too busy and too tired to write yesterday anyway.

All of this brought up questions.  Am I a quitter?   Is writing not important to me?  Am I being inconsistent?  No, no, and no. I am simply living life.  I have standards.  One of them is to write as much as possible.  This is not, however, a rule.  This is a guideline.  It is, as I said, a standard.  In the big picture, I have still written nearly 500 blogs in a year and a half.  Perhaps I will write two blogs a day for the next year without fail.   Or maybe I won’t.  There are many purposes for writing these blogs.  Exhausting myself isn’t one of them.  Enjoying life is.  So is encouraging others.  And if someone wants to be encouraged, there are still 490 other blogs to read.

So I took the day off from writing yesterday, but I didn’t take the day off from Purpose.  The Purpose of Purpose is love and I was able to love others, my Muse and myself by doing my job well, by getting some sleep and by reducing my stress. According to one website, http://statisticbrain.com/stress-statistics/,  stress related health issues cost $300 billion. I prefer not to be part of that.  It was a more responsible and loving decision to not write.  Today writing is the more responsible and loving decision.  In fact, I might even write two blogs.

Can one be responsible and consistent and still take time off?  Yes, because, again, life is not about rules, but about living and living well.  When my health or morale are affected I don’t live well.  This leaves the door open for not only damaging my health and morale, but it allows for the possibility of preventing me from writing at all.  So, at the advice of my Muse, I backed off.  Retreating is not surrender.  It’s just retreating…for a while.

It also helps to remind myself that yesterday was an exception.  I still plan to write every day.  I still plan on writing three pages every morning and doing at least one blog a day and preferably two.  I still plan on doing my radio shows.  I still plan on saving money.  I still plan on getting my house on the beach.

Nothing changed yesterday.

I still plan to Get Started and Keep Going…for a long, long time.  That’s why I didn’t write yesterday.