Coming out of hiatus

Well you know that I love to live with you
But you make me forget so very much.
I forget to pray for the angels
And then the angels forget to pray for us.

– Leonard Cohen

It’s been 3 weeks since my last blogpost, and while I was already randomly reflecting on why I got off my initial plan of posting weekly, writing about it is a different story, so, here we go.

To kick off the thinking process, I re-read my own post on how I was planning to beat procrastination, and quickly spotted the culprit. From the list of ingredients that are required for my productivity, one went missing for the duration of the last month: creative work.

I started blogging when I was living alone on a wonderful Thai island, enjoying my little productive routine and looking forward to a visit from a friend of mine, a very special Ukrainian girl. Then she came, and we started spending time together, and time we only have so much, so, I had less of that for building stuff. And no, it wouldn’t occur to me to blame my friend for that shift of focus, it’s totally the opposite: those weekends we spent together were worth dropping whatever I could be doing. I simply had to admit that there’s these different modes of being, and none of them can accommodate, at any given period of time, all the desires and moods that I value. My life for the past month has been different from what I was experiencing prior.

The importance of creativity being present in my life keeps fascinating me, as nobody teaches this in school. That crucial ingredient went missing, and energy levels quickly sank. Whenever I tried to sit down and write, it didn’t progress further than a paragraph or two, and I felt plain bored. Additionally, the feelings of defeat, the imposter syndrome, and overall punches of guilt at the mere thought of getting to write were making matters worse.

Another downer was that my favorite island had become so popular among the tourists lately, that we couldn’t rent a reasonable place for the month of January. So, for the 3 remaining weeks we had to move over to the neighboring island that had more of a vibe of a noisy city than of a tropical island, which affected both of us.

Now, things are changing for me again. My friend stayed in Thailand, I went to Sri Lanka, and yay, today is the first day of my sabbatical. I feel that I started getting back to where I was, and the anticipation is building up again. In 3 hours I’m leaving Colombo (an okay-ish city with little to do), and moving inland in search of nature, cycling, hiking - and getting to the work that excites me most.