So I guess it is time to get back to the business of being productive. I wrote in last week’s post about knowing when to take a break and not feeling guilty for needing one. I said that I was probably going to take a couple of days to collect myself mentally and to refill the creative well so to speak. Well I took the whole week and I am so glad I did.
I didn’t even know how much I needed it until I was in the middle of the week and just decided that I was going to go the whole week. I read, I watched some TV, I read some more, I watched some YouTube as part of my research (okay I guess I snuck a tiny bit of work related research in there lol). I did not get out in nature like I could have but it was either really hot and humid here all last week, or there were flash flood thunderstorms. So yeah, I watched the outside from indoors.
I’m not going to lie and say that I didn’t feel a pang of guilt when I realized all that I wanted to have out by the end of this year and what I needed to get done to get there. However, I stuck to the mental break that I had put myself on (okay most of the time, maybe not entirely, but I digress), and I truly feel a bit more refreshed mentally, and I feel more creative and I feel more aware of the things that I need to do going forward to make the rest of this year somewhat of a success (as successful as it can be during a global pandemic anyway) and there are some things that I need to reconfigure about my marketing and business plans and a few things in terms of re-publishing my first book that I also need to consider and I feel a bit more ready to handle the specific tasks that I need to do in order to proceed.
I highly advise taking breaks for the sake of your mental health if you start to feel yourself heading towards a burnout of some sort, or even a creative block. Perhaps even incorporate one weekend out of every month where you take a break from everything so that you won’t end up needing a whole entire week but however long you need one, breaks are necessary. Creative people can not function, non-stop without stepping away from your creative endeavors.
It has taken me forever to get this into my head that it is not wrong, it is not lazy, and it definitely is not selfish, to look after you! I wish I hadn’t had to learn this valuable lesson the many hard ways in which I did but hey, what is life without a lot of hard valuable lessons to learn along the way. So don’t stifle your creativity by putting constant pressure on yourself to always be on the go and feeling like you always have to produce something. Sometimes the most creative thing that we creative types can do is to just let the ideas marinate in our brains for a while until they are ready to be fully realized. Until next time… #BeMindful #BeAware #BeRestorative
Jimmetta Carpenter
Writer/Editor
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Write 2 Be 
Definitely agree with this, it is so important to take breaks, and it is so sad that so many feel this to bee a bad thing. When in reality no one can be happy if their life is a constant burnout.