Making and Breaking Rules

 On Mother’s Day, I wanted a quiet, drama free day – the kind of day that lends itself to reading. Happily, that’s what I got. I worked my way through a few of the magazines in my ever-expanding pile, and I got to spend some time doing other sorts of reading as well.

As it turned out, this Mother's Day activity was a good warm-up for the summer vacation that lay ahead. Now, with my online class behind me, I'm digging into my writing and, after a really good week of writing last week, I decided to take Sunday off. Instead of writing, I puttered, started a new jigsaw puzzle, and read -- books and magazines instead of one or the other. It was relaxing and rejuvenating.

You know. Kinda how vacation is supposed to be.

About midway through the day, I decided that I was going to make taking Sundays off from writing a new habit. Although this decision flies in the face of a popular writing rule (writers must write every day), it gave me the opportunity to commit to another popular concept.

Writers must also be readers. 

This writer is on year two of a "finish what you started" reading plan, endeavoring not just to read, but to finish two books a month. I know that doesn't sound like much but, when it comes to reading, I have commitment issues. I start an enormous number of books on multiple platforms (traditional, e-book, audiobook), along with the aforementioned magazines. Although I've long since given up (intentionally) on finishing every book I start, opting to finish only the ones in which I find personal value, not finishing anything was problematic.

Enter my Sunday plan. Not only does it give me a chance to dedicate time to reading (rather than fitting it in between the cracks of a daily schedule), it also gives my writer mind a day to be creative, rather than productive (another one of my recent goals).

Today, I came across an article that further convinced me that Sundays off from writing will be a good plan. Entitled "When Passion Leads to Burnout," it takes issue with the idea that if you do something you love, you'll never work a day in your life. Instead, it focuses on the idea that we can, indeed, have too much of a good thing, and that blurring the work/play line can lead to the kind of stress that comes from not knowing where to draw the line.

Life is full of rules and guidelines. Some we need to follow (stopping at stop signs and red lights, for example). Others, we need to adapt to suit our goals and lifestyle. While my personal rule book is a work in progress, I've learned that putting well-being and creativity in the early chapters is essential. Without those two attributes, productivity is just busy work, and work without purpose is just, well work.

And you know what they say about all work and no play.

Friday Feature: Work-Life Balance?

A year or so ago, I did a lunchtime presentation on work-life balance. It was a hot topic, not one of my choosing, but important to those in attendance. Much of my focus ended up being on not aiming for perfection and cutting ourselves some slack — understanding that finding that sweet spot where everything falls into place wasn’t likely to happen daily, but taking time to appreciate it when it did.

At least I hope that’s the message I sent.

Fast forward to last week when I came across this article in Quartz. I came away with the notion that nomenclature itself (work-life balance), it seems, is part of the problem. In a balancing act, we are sometimes perfectly balanced, but often a bit off-kilter, trying to align everything just so — perfectly, if you will.

And that is how life goes. Being off-balance doesn’t make us failed and miserable. It makes us human.

I came away from the article preferring the term “work-life blend,” a descriptor that leaves me feeling less pressured because it’s more reflective of the give and take of daily life. I blend my work and my life every single day and there’s a certain beauty to the blend — a wideness — that makes me feel as though I’m working within a spectrum instead of tottering on the tip of a fulcrum, trying to land on the right side, as opposed to the wrong one.

This simple shift in vocabulary isn’t a magic fix, but it gives me a wider margin of error, one where the margins aren’t error at all — just an extension of what is most important to me that day. It removes the stress inherent in aiming to achieve that perfect spot atop the fulcrum and gives me permission to totter a bit on the seesaw.

Balance vs. blend. Words matter.

Friday Feature: Active Rest

Perhaps it's because I'm on vacation, but I'm finding the topic of balance quite interesting. It's a great topic for summer, though -- a time where relaxation is an implicit part of the plan. We're supposed to relax in the summer. It's allowed.

But why can't we relax the rest of the year? Sure, there are myriad reasons. Work pressure. School pressure. Life in general.

Or are they excuses?

Our brains do a better job of operating efficiently when we give them down time. We take in an enormous amount of information all day every day and our brains need time to process it. Sleep, actually, is one of the times that our brains do just that -- sort through the detritus of the day to determine what matters and what doesn't.

Think you need to keep powering forward? Stop for a moment and think about how much time you spend at work actually working. If you're like most people, it's definitely not the full eight hours. And not because we're slackers. A lighter, more leisurely work day was behind a lot of work we now consider brilliant.

Don't believe me? Check out "Why You Should Slack off to Get Some Work Done." And then take a nap.

You've earned it.

Beach Pages

As photos go, this one's pretty bad. 
But as a metaphor, it's dead on,
vacation (Candy Kitchen) and
characters jockeying for position.

We're at the beach this week and, the first night we were here, my husband asked me what I wanted to do while we were down here. My answer was immediate and simple, if unimaginative: read, sleep and write.

We'll also go to the beach, of course (spoiler alert: I'll get one very sunburned leg because I drowned my husband in sunscreen then forgot to put said sunscreen on my own legs), and spend time out on the screened-in porch in the mornings and evenings, as well as going out to eat and probably doing some shopping. Then there are the chapters I'm supposed to be working on, and the tweets and posts for my #ChristmasinJuly promotion and...

Do you see what I just did? I took work on vacation. I can argue that, when it's something I enjoy doing, it's not really work but, that's not completely true. When deadlines and must-do's loom in my head, that's not pleasure. That's work.

Yesterday, on the beach, I watched an adorable toddler use the pole of a beach umbrella to pull himself up to standing and then look up in wonder at the underside of the umbrella. The psych professor in me went immediately to dynamic systems theory, the collision of opportunity and motivation, and Piaget's sensorimotor stage wherein the senses and physical capabilities guide cognitive development.

If you dozed off during the end of that last paragraph, that's okay. Better than okay, actually. I was at the beach, for heaven's sake. Why were dead developmental theorists there with me? Ditto blog posts and deadlines.

For me, vacation and writing are inextricably linked, particularly since the screened-in porch at the condo where we stay is my favorite place to write. But writing doesn't have to mean deadlines and, on vacation, it probably shouldn't unless I'm in danger of missing one.

So, yesterday, I inaugurated Beach Pages. Years ago, my former agent clued me in to Morning Pages,  a concept that just didn't click for me. It's a great idea, but I'm too impatient to carry it out, preferring instead to dig into the work I need to do (or, if I'm honest, procrastinate by easing slowly into the morning).

At the beach, however, it seemed like a great idea, but one I wanted to tweak. As a non-morning person, I prefer to ease into the day, especially when I'm on vacation. But, on the beach, I feel drawn to write. What better place is there for me to let my mind go free and to simply empty thoughts onto the page? Faced with seemingly endless stretches of sand and sea, why shouldn't I let my mind do likewise, moving beyond the boundaries of topics and chapters and deadlines?

And so, this week, that's what I'll do. Every serious goal needs a notebook, of course (at least if you're a stationery aficiando like I am), so last night, I went searching for one. Though there were contenders, I didn't find quite what I had in mind. Disappointing, but if a legal pad worked yesterday, I can press it into service again today. (Hmm...now I think I need a notebook with a pocket....)

There's only one rule to Beach Pages: write. Since I'm used to using writing sprints, I'm adapting them here. I grab my paper and pen (soon to be a notebook and pen), set my phone timer for an hour and write. About anything. Or nothing.

No rules. Just write. That's a vacation plan I can get behind.