Last week I finished reading James S.A. Corey’s Cibola Burn, the fourth book in The Expanse series. Originally, I had envisioned reading and writing about a number of different sci-fi series as a part of this blog. So far, it had worked and for the last couple of years I have read a lot of great books that I have been meaning to get to. There have also been a few not-so-great books in there, too, but I don’t mind that so much.
The Corey book was good. It was an entertaining read and continues to develop the series on a good trajectory. But when it came time to begin writing about it, I just couldn’t seem to make myself do it. I have generally been pretty good about motivating myself to write since graduate school, but this just wasn’t happening.
There are a couple of reasons that I just couldn’t seem to get myself over the hump and write it. The first reason is just time. The longer the span of time between finishing reading and beginning writing, the more I put it off. I was losing little bits of plot and details about the characters. I write most of these posts from memory and with minimal notes. I will occasionally draft little bits while reading or note particular passages, but I don’t get overly studious about it.
I write most of these posts within a day or two of finishing a book while it is still relatively fresh and while it is still on my mind.
I hadn’t gotten a chance to write about this because my job has been working massive amounts of overtime for the last 3 months since the Covid 19 quarantine started. I work in a warehouse in inventory control. My job is not super physical but I am on my feet all day. It can have physical elements to it at times. As our working days increased in length, I just didn’t have it in me to come home, shift gears to think about writing, and still have time to spend with my wife, eat, and have time to relax. I just ran out of time. This meant that the things that I would normally do during the week after work would get pushed to the weekends and the time I would normally spend reading and writing then dried up as well.
In fact, this is the first bout of sustained writing that I have done in nearly that whole three months.
The reason, then, that this all caught up to me is that I had been writing a backlog of posts for about the last year. At one point, I had about 6 months’ worth of posts pre-written and scheduled for a weekly update. Just this month I ran through my backlog and am up to current.
This made me question the future of this blog. Did I really need to post weekly? It was my own schedule and I can really do what I want. No one really reads this anyway, so what was the difference?
I still don't have an answer to these questions. There is a part of me that wants to chuck this whole blog and concentrate what time I do get to another project. But then again, I am loathe to give up on something that I have, essentially, been doing just for myself all along. So I miss a post here and there. No one cares. I can pick up whenever I want.
I think that I will keep going. Maybe I can focus on shorter posts, or maybe I can find a different way to carve out some extra time. I do like thinking and writing about books.
Here is the point of all of this: work is fatiguing, even when it is work that we want to do, and particularly when it is work that we do not want to do. I can’t take a break from my day job right now but I may be able to take a break from this for a little to recharge and refocus. I do have other projects that I want to work on, or maybe I can just let things run fallow for a spell before trying to take anything on.
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