Sunday, May 31, 2009

The Fight Against Burn Out

All---

Like many other writers, I have more demands on my time and energy than just my writing. I have a straight job. Mine is a pretty good job, all things considered, but it is a salaried management position and that means that it has a lot of fair claim to both time and energy. (I thought being a grad student was bad about that, but then I was only beholden to myself, not to people paying a paycheck.) I also have a wife, and my relationship with her is my top earthly concern. Throw those together with health issues and some aggressive goals to try and advance my writing career, and I'm realizing that I'm burning myself out pretty quickly.

How do y'all manage it? I'm serious about this writing thing, and I hope to be doing it full-time some day. (Yes, I will sell my artistic soul on the commercial market if I can make enough bucks to live on. Someday.) But it is not in my nature to slack off at my regular job, and I certainly cannot let my relationship with Rose become less important to me.

And yet I feel like I need to address these things in a different way or I'm going to totaly crash in a couple weeks and be useless to everyone.

So how do y'all do it? How do you manage your time, your priorities, your life's needs?

.Nevets.

5 comments:

  1. Still working on that, Nevets. Honestly, I manage it by walking away from it. 'It' being the writing goals and salaried j-o-b. Not the wife.

    Become the master of minute vacations, deep cleansing breaths, and glorying in the magnificent mess you find yourself in.

    I also eat a lot of ice cream.

    For a look at a freelance writer who's doing pretty ok, check out Mark Terry's blog.

    ReplyDelete
  2. ok, the link didn't work. Let's try again: Mark Terry's blog. The address is markterrybooks.com/blog.html. Darn my rudimentary html skillz.

    Also, to clarify, by walking away, I mean at the end of the day. Being able to lay it down and move on to something different. Not abandoning it.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Haha, if we figure that out, we'll all be millionaires. But seriously, you have to know when to take a break from writing. I think you can still be successful and take breaks every now and then. You won't be doing any writing if you push yourself to the edge and have a breakdown. And as Heather said, I don't watch tv either, lol. Well, except for Chuck every Monday night. ;)

    ReplyDelete
  4. If you don't have the extra time readily available (who does?), you have to make sacrifices. Plain and simple. So it comes down to how much you want to pursue that writing career and what you have to give up.

    Like Heather, I don't watch TV. I don't even have cable. Save money + time. Fabulous. I don't spend much time on my other hobbies because I've concluded I'm more interested in getting my writing somewhere. And, since I'm self-employed, I have the luxury of letting my job suffer (though it's not really good of me).

    For some people it's sleep. But, I value my sleep too much.

    : )

    Try to find a balance that works for you.

    ReplyDelete

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