CONFESSIONS OF A MOM

I had the opportunity this last weekend to go to a writer’s conference in Utah. I’ve been going for several years now and really enjoy seeing those friends I only get to see face to face once or twice in a year. And this time around, I went with a different purpose in mind. It was very interesting to see what came of it.

I’m burned out. I’ve openly admitted that to several people lately, and to me that says a lot. So I took this opportunity to go to Utah with nothing big in mind. I wasn’t even sure I would attend any classes at all. I gave myself permission to just sit in the hotel room and do nothing, or write, or read, or whatever I felt like doing.

Life is just interesting in how things happen. I did end up attending classes and felt the spark to write again ignite. However, I decided to put my current work in progress (WIP), THE BLACK ORCHID on the back burner and begin something new that has been floating around in my mind.

With that in mind, a good friend of mind talked me through how to get more writing time in my life. And for shutting her down and coming up with excuse after excuse, I appreciated her persistence in helping me. Not many people would put up with the amount of closed doors I threw her way. :) By the end of the conference though, she had given me some good ideas that I did hear. I just need to see about implementing them now.

Then a surprise came. I had entered THE BLACK ORCHID in the first chapter contest a while back. In fact I had entered it in a Beginning of Book contest back in February and it took second in the Young Adult category. But for some reason I wasn’t expecting much this time around. Well, it took first place in the mystery/suspense category. That plus lots of encouragement from other people to keep working on it shifted my thinking about pulling it from the back burner.

Then . . . another good friend talked about a class she took on accountability partnership and by the end of the conference we had worked that out with us and one other gal. (I’ll get into the accountability partnership for a later post because it really is a great tool.)

By the end of the conference I was armed with great ideas and a ton of motivation. The partnership has been going great and I’ve been amazed at how my productivity level has increased. I was also amazed to see how quickly life intervened for each of us and our goals for the day were altered. It’s been fascinating to see, but at the same time very enlightening.

However, I found myself toward the end of the week, Friday in particular, feeling like a failure and feeling burned out again. It seems like by the time I get to the end of the week I’m burned out again. Somehow I need to snap out of it and work through it, but I haven’t figured that out. I know that’s part of life, but I guess I’m asking you guys. What do you do to defeat the “end of the week blues” as I’m going to coin it? Maybe together we can all get some great ideas and find what works best for us. I feel like this is an abrupt way to end a post but my brain just shut down. So once again, I sure hope this all makes sense and that you are able to see how I came to the conclusions I came to. And hopefully we’ll be able to help each other out. :)