I am exhausted.

With over a week spent at my sister’s to help her rehab from hip replacement, to the very next day an author event and some driving, to yesterday tearing out all my tomatoes, beans, and cucumbers and cleanup. I am exhausted.

Last week while still at my sister’s place, I told myself that this week, especially today and tomorrow, I would spend the time resting and watching replays from the Self-Publishing Advice Conference 2024.

Just sit and watch. Maybe fix a meal. Maybe go for a walk or do my exercises that I didn’t do last week.

Rest.

Maybe nap. But for sure, rest.

Dearly Beloved and the dog didn’t leave until after 12 pm. He was gone playing pool at the senior center in the morning, so I had quiet time here. But as I move through the house, there are so many piles to be dealt with—the mess from being gone. How does that happen? I was gone, but things pile up. There must be a cute little being, who comes in when I’m gone, and piles up things: the mail, dirty dishes, towels to be washes.

And all I want to a do is nap. Probably a good thing to do. But who is going to clean up those piles?

There is business to catch up on that didn’t get done last week—both trucking business and author business. Needs to be done. That’s a priority.

And then there’s planning for not just this week in the author business, but for the rest of this month/quarter of 2024. I have planned the quarter, but as things change, that needs to change, also. Then I break down the month and quarterly tasks into weekly ones, which is very helpful. It helps to not overwhelm me.

Even household stuff needs to bee attended to. Unload the dishwasher. Fill it. Again.

There are still boxes from the Bargains for You on 92 sale that we participated in. I went through boxes and boxes to find stuff that we no longer want or need. There are still boxes in the utility room that haven’t been put away.

My office is also quite the mess. Although that kind of mess doesn’t bother me so much. It’s a creative mess.

But how is any of this about rest?

And what is the definition of rest?

Here are some synonyms: relax, lie down, put one’s feet up. Here’s one: standstill. Like … come to a standstill. Totally the opposite of what I did.

Maybe I am connecting the word rest to the word peace, instead.

Maybe both are playing the same tune here.

But let’s play along. What if … what if rest is how I feel when I refreshed my kombucha? I love that stuff and when there is only one bottle left in the refrigerator, I brew more tea to refresh it. So when I accomplished that task, was there rest?

Or setting up my weekly tasks for my author business and posting that online. That takes me awhile. I read through last week’s plan, noted what I had accomplished, and wrote what still needed to be done into this week’s plan. One of those tasks is this book. Every day. Write the words.

That always helps me breathe easier. Then what I do is check the plan. A guy who helped us when we had the grocery store had a saying, “Plan your work and work your plan.” It’s probably a really old saying. I’m not sure that he made it up, but I remember it. And it works.

That’s why I love Orna Ross’s Go Creative Planners. We challenge ourselves, ask probing questions about who we are as a person, as an author, and we apply the answers to our plans and where we want to go. What we determine as our personal success and then how to create that sort of success.

Even writing this now, doesn’t feel like anything helpful. It doesn’t feel important or profound and that is what I want to write. I want to write what might help someone, something that might make a difference in their life. 

So how is this turning into anything that would help a person?

A while back, I read one of Steven Pressfield’s blog posts that he uses for email newsletters and it gripped me. It’s a short, maybe three-four paragraph long post and it gripped me. I got online and ordered three or four of his books. Not the newest ones but his journey-along-the-way books.

Here’s one: https://stevenpressfield.com/2024/09/whatever-you-think-your-limits-are-youre-wrong/

Or another one: https://stevenpressfield.com/2024/08/the-price-of-the-artists-journey/ I’m not an affiliate, although I should be! I own lots of his books—fiction and nonfiction.

There is something that happens in my gut when I read his very short blog posts. There is something that stirs in me when I glance up at the beautiful eagle on the wall in my office. My daughter painted it for me. She had her battles. The eagle represents her battles—our battles. The verse below is from John 14:20: NASBS “In that day you will know that I am in My Father, and you in Me, and I in you.”

That somehow sums it up. I am not a preacher or a scholar. I’m not an evangelist.

But that verse and Steven’s blog posts stir up the warrior in me.

Steven publishes under Military Thrillers, or War Fiction categories.

How this writing started with Creative Rest and is now Creative battle or Creative War or Creative Warrior, I have no idea. But something is stirring. Something needs to be said. Something needs to be done or written that I haven’t done or written yet.

There is a stirring in my gut. To rise above. To rise above the laziness, the procrastination, above the fears.

There is a stirring to become. A stirring to do. To create.

And a stirring to not give up. To not quit.

Okay. I get it now. This post has gone from procrastination (when I actually accomplished household things that actually needed to be done.) to battling my way to actually writing what needed to be said.

It’s truly a battle to get past all the crap, the tasks that need doing, to know that these last few paragraphs were where I needed to land. A friend from a few years back calls it planned avoidance, or planned neglect, meaning I need to walk past the dirty dishes, the unpaid bills (well … ), the household stuff like my kombucha refreshing, the unfolded towels in the dryer … past all that … to the task at hand.

This writing.

The last few paragraphs here.

The reason that I breathed a deep sigh of … yeah.