What to do when you're too tired to write.

Paint.

My life has recently become extremely busy. Sometimes I feel like I'm being pulled in so many different directions that I might tear into little pieces. I'm trying to do it all so I've been getting progressively less and less sleep, and therefore am more and more tired. There are things I have to do to ensure the bills are paid.

There are also things I both want and need to do for and with my family. These things have, for significant reasons, recently become even more important to me and will place increasing demands on my time for at least the next year.

I'm also in the middle of a kitchen renovation that should have taken less than a week but will now take something like six weeks. I have cupboards but no benchtops or running water, or stove. It's a little like camping. I hate camping.

Then there are things I do for me. Those are the things that have suffered.

I've been editing Dragon God, the sequel to Warrior Pledge, but I did nothing on it for a week. I'd look at my computer and my brain wouldn't even imagine my favourite character. I didn't open the file.

I knew I had to do something to fix it. Writing is important to me. I don't feel completely like me unless I'm writing every day.

So what did I do when I didn't have time to do anything I needed to do with the attention it deserved? I took on something else, of course.

I enrolled in an art class. On Wednesday night, I spent two hours painting. I sat quietly mixing and dabbing paint, listening to the conversations going on around me. Every now and then I stood up and checked my work from a distance and wandered around the room to see what everyone else was doing. I didn't say much. (There a nice group of people and I did talk to them, just not all night.) I was completely focused on adding light and shade or texture or depth. Nothing else mattered.

At the end of two hours I cleaned up and walked out. While I still felt tired, I felt like I'd had a refreshing swim, submerged in the water so that the outside world became an indistinct hum. It was like at least part of my brain had been able to rest.

Last night I wrote again so, regardless of what else I need to do in my life, all's right with my world.

One Grey Elephant - Unfinished (2017-2-23)