The Value of Taking a Break by Susan Barclay

At times it’s been a hot summer, but when you have air conditioning, you can never really use the excuse that it’s “too hot to write.” Still, as MarniePohlmann expressed a few days ago, there’s a season for everything, and sometimes it’s appropriate to take a break – even from something as important as writing. 

In fact, this has been a somewhat challenging year for me. As I contemplate the prospect of writing the annual Christmas letter, I toy with the terms ‘annus horribilis” and “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times…” I won’t get into the details, but apart from a few personal experience pieces and their submission, I have not succeeded in accomplishing the writing projects I had in mind. In the eyes of someone like Stephen King, who believes in writing every day regardless, perhaps I’m a bad writer or no kind of writer at all. I choose to believe something different, though: I am a writer taking a break from writing to live a very real life, one that gets a little messy, one that requires my attention.

I’m reminded of a quote from Tom Hodgkinson that says, “Being lazy does not mean that you do not create. In fact, lying around doing nothing is an important, nay crucial, part of the creative process. It is meaningless bustle that actually gets in the way of productivity.” While I wouldn’t say I’m “being lazy” or “lying around doing nothing,” I do believe that what I am going through is, or will be, part of my creative process and future literary fertility. But if I were relaxing or otherwise unoccupied, I would remember that there is value in being “bored.” Recent studies show that boredom leads to more creativity and encourages the pursuit of new goals. Hurray for science, right?

And like Gretchen Rubin, who “always had the uncomfortable feeling that if [she] wasn't sitting in front of a computer typing, [she] was wasting [her] time,” take “a wider view of what [is]"productive." Time spent with … family and friends [is] never wasted.” At the end of the day, we’re not going to wish we’d spent more of our time working; investing in people is what lasts and has eternal value. So, go ahead, take that break. I’ll know I’m in good company with you.

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For more of my writing, please visit www.susan-barclay.ca or www.susanbarclay.wordpress.com