The funk hit right after I got back home from the aforementioned conference. I was drained of energy and overflowing with new information in connection with the beloved craft of writing. Being that lopsided tends to take a few days to right itself again–under normal circumstances. But I am up to my neck in summer awesomeness which includes, but is not limited to, three kids under the age of 7, a dog, no set schedule, and a type B personality that decided it should meet each new day at the birth of it…you know, midnight. Yeah, you can see that I have all the calm and serenity to process the bulk of the conference by Christmas!
I can easily stay in the overwhelmed state that could and would turn me to old habits of simply chucking this whole writing dream in the closet of “its just too hard.” Instead, I am shutting the journal of notes down, and resting the big project that I got all ambitious on and take a smaller approach. It’s easy to get fired up to leap off the cliff when you are in the atmosphere of such creative minds. I felt encouraged and humbled by the caliber of writer at that conference. My reality is that until September, my children are here and need me all day, every day. This won’t always be the case and with each summer that comes around, I have seen an increase in summer independence–I never would have even attended a conference before this year!
So for now, I will just survive. I will throw out as many blog posts as I can, I will make deadlines by the skin of my teeth and I will make memories with my kids. It’s all progress. These are the years I will file away in the “You Did it Even When it was Hard” file. I will draw from them when a book is 90% done and it is hard and I want to quit. I will tell myself, “You didn’t give up when the kids were 2, 4, and 6 and they were home all the time in the summer–and you can’t quit now!’