Have you ever felt burned out on kind of everything? I have. I’m tired, and I find myself lagging in everything the last two weeks. No real reason, except my body is not allowing me to get as much sleep as it used to (I don’t know why and it isn’t insomnia – I just get up a lot earlier, and going to bed earlier doesn’t help). And the burnout is kind of with everything, too. I am behind in blog posts, a book that takes me a few hours to read will take a few days, writing something I think is of substance for my manuscript or brainstorming new projects… hah! And I am on cruise control with the house and work deadlines. No, I am not depressed or ill or have any reason to be slowing down as of late, but it makes me feel like an airhead at times. And lazy. Actually, the two are kind of the same thing to me.
I had a blog post all ready for today. I wrote it, and loved it a little too much. You see, Sundays are a slower day for me (I think, honestly it has been difficult to get any set pattern on popular versus unpopular days) so I wanted to save it for next week. Then I had an idea on something else to write that would be perfect for today, but when I sat down and tried to write it – nothing. I have learned not to force such things. Obviously, this perfect fit, convenient and supposedly easy idea just wasn’t going to happen today. And then I wrote another blog post. I loved it, and had no problem letting it be a Sunday post, except it felt similar in tone to something I posted recently, so I thought more time should pass before posting it.
After this second blog post reject, my three-year-old niece and nephew invaded (not that it wasn’t a welcome invasion 😉 ) and I went out with my husband’s whole family to dinner. After saying goodbye to the twins, Roy (my husband) wanted to grab some ice cream before we went home, so we did. When we arrived back home, I knew I had to write a blog post, but I had to think about what to write about.
It isn’t that I lacked post ideas – I have a lot of topics and ideas in my blog post queue, but I had two problems. First, (same problem as before) I post pretty consistently on a Sunday and my goal is four posts per week, so I didn’t want to give Sunday up, BUT it hasn’t been a popular day lately. So whatever I posted today couldn’t be something I was deeply passionate about or something I really hoped people viewed, liked and/or commented on. The problem with me is most of my ideas are things that I care about. I have very few ‘throw away’ blog post ideas.
And then there was the new problem. I was so done for the day. I didn’t want to think, even about something fun or interesting. So, I needed something brainless. I’m not very good at being brainless – I mean I am the kind of person who overthinks everything! So what to do?
I asked my husband for ideas, but whenever I ask him something like this he looks up prompts. This is not helpful in this kind of situation.
ME: No, I want you to think for yourself about anything I can do that doesn’t require any thought. A lot of these prompts are good ideas and things I’ll totally do someday, but they are supposed to get you going, as in get you thinking. I don’t want to think.
I had ideas I could write about if I was up for some reflecting, but I wasn’t. So, I wanted to do something funny – a joke or spoof of some kind, but that would take thought too. I mean the best jokes are clever (thought alert!) or at least sarcastic (contrary to popular belief this also requires thought – at least if you want your puns to be effective). I was so stuck!
Then I thought, “What about this?” I mean a blog post about being stuck and blah and needing to write a post, but not being able to write what you need, or want to think or be clever… no one really wants to read about that, probably, but it is something I haven’t done before. And it is completely honest and authentic. I mean who wants to say out loud (or send a message out in cyber space), “Yeah, I got nothing.”
It turns out writing something that you don’t care too much about, but is also different than something you have done before, and not something that you can’t actually write an entire post about is hard. And if you want to have it require little to no thought or reflection or wit… it is friggin difficult. On the plus side, trying to come up with something for today’s blog added about twenty new ideas to my blog post queue, which pretty much covers me for the rest of the year. 😛
-DMW
