It's unfortunate that "blog" portmanteaus so nicely with "August", because in truth, any other month would probably be better for this kind of undertaking. August happens to be my month of hire at work, so the month is dotted with mostly pointless but compulsory annual trainings and recertifications. It also happens to be the month of my and my spouse's anniversary. For extra disruption, it's also the month Cockatoo decided to take her vacation, during which she did in fact get covid. I've been doing her work for the past two weeks. According to her texts, she should finally be returning to the office tomorrow. Tuesday is the day a massive pile of her work comes in, so I had to suffer through one more day of that today. Despite all that, I think I've had a pretty successful Blaugust. Sure, some of posts have just been filler (like today's, I'm afraid) but some of them I'm really proud of, and they probably would never have been written if I wasn't pushing myself to write every day.
The weather for the past week has been incredible. Lows in the 50s, highs in the 70s. I'm hoping Summer is truly over. I'm thinking about how I want to spend September. I want to get back to walking every day. My back hasn't been hurting since I stopped the trazodone, but taking a long walk every day in nice weather helps me feel better. Fall is the best season, and I want to get out and enjoy it. Thus, I'll probably stop posting every day; but recently, not much I've written at work has made it out of draft form. Most of my posts have been written at home, in the evenings. It's hard to write with a tired brain, but it's hard to write at work, too. I'm self-conscious about using the laptop, despite my best efforts. It's not a frictionless experience. At home, I usually relax my reading and listening to music at my desk, so if the mood/inspiration strikes, I can be writing within a second. I don't have that kind of freedom at work. If I get the urge to write at 09h00, well, that's too early for my lunch break. So I either have to write on my phone (which makes me dislike writing--I don't want to have to go back to that) or hope the urge is still with me by 11 or 12h00. It often isn't. The creative urge is slippery. You can't really go looking for it. You just have to be ready to catch it when it finds you. As Winnie-the-Pooh observed:
Poetry and Hums aren't things which you get, they're things which get you. And all you can do is to go where they can find you.
The same is true of even the humble journal entry. You wouldn't think a post like this one requires that much creative motivation. I'm not telling a story, I'm not presenting an argument, I'm just saying things that have been in my head and putting them to keyboard. But it is a creative act, and the way you can tell is because I'm doing it, and the overwhelming majority of my time is spent not doing it. That's the easy default. I don't have to write this, nobody's forcing me, and the consequence for not doing it would be nothing. And yet I intentionally set out to create the conditions in which I'm able to write (music, reading, daydreaming, relaxing, petting a cat) and lo and behold, here I am. That's the most valuable lesson I learn from challenge events like Blaugust and #100DaysToOffload. If I don't create the conditions in which I can write, I don't write, and when I don't write, I stop thinking of myself as a writer, and when I don't think of myself as a writer, I don't create the conditions in which I can write. It's a inertia spiral that leads to the default path of not doing as opposed to doing..
So, I'm not going to force a daily update schedule after the end of August, but I strongly want to continue creating the conditions in which I could write if something comes to me. I might try to write daily to exercise that muscle, but only post the good stuff. I dunno, we'll see. But it's important that I don't lose this again!
Tomorrow is the last mandatory training of the month, and I expect it'll only take a couple hours. After that my schedule is pretty clear. I plan to do some daydreaming.