This last weekend I took some time off. Not from the day job - but from Sanderley Studios. I've been writing darn near every day this year, and I needed a little break from it. However, the First Reader and I made up for words on paper by spending a few hours driving together and plotting. So I am raring to go now that I am home and sitting at my writing desk. I'm also contemplating what I need to make this desk workable, but that's a whole 'nother bag of biscuits as the Jr. Mad Scientist says.
Ah. That's better. Moved the laptop to lap and a different location. My back likes this.
So the upshot was that I really needed several things. It's funny how you get all twisted up, and you know what you need to do to unwind, but you're so caught up in the routine you don't think of it, until you do it. It's like that. Having unraveled my mind, I'm able to look back and go: Oh! That was what I needed all along. One of the refrains of my weekend: I need to have conversations with people not my family. In person. Routinely, not once or twice a year. It's not the Kabuki Theatre Quarantine-Style, it's just where we live and how we live. We're busy. We don't make time for social activity. That bites me in the butt. The First Reader, who wouldn't admit this or he would lose his Curmudgeon card, also needs to talk to people from time to time. Not as much as I do, admittedly!
Having had friends over to stay in our new guest room (life goal: unlocked), having met up with other friends for dinner, and having spent time away from the Net by virtue of driving a lot through KY, I'm appreciating the curative effects of rambling conversations, conversational ping-pong over the dinner table (it's so much fun to follow three or four threads at once and chip in on any at a given moment), and focus on something other than Work.
I do recommend it. I know it's not always possible. But note to Future Cedar: plan. Make plans for quarterly R&R (let's not be too ambitious, here, with monthly or something wild like that) where meeting people happens in settings where conversations are possible. Also: rpg's are fun. Do that again.
And now I am off to try and write a little Hatrack before I go to bed. And possibly look at topics for blog posts so I can get back on a routine again.
(Header: Dinner with family-of-the-heart after the wedding in 2015)