Earlier I wrote about how disciplined writing can yield great results for progress. I wish I could remember who said it originally, but there was a saying that was told to me that really helped me continue writing. Treat your hobby and passion like you would work, that you have to do it and work towards improving yourself. Because of this, I feel that I’ve improved as a writer tenfold simply by trying to learn and further develop my own skills on a day to day basis.
I started contemplating on the whole idea of work life balance. For me, I started viewing both writing and drawing as work I do outside of work. Both have become more than hobbies to me, both became defining parts of who I am and what I do. I personally believe that, for anything that people consider to be their passions, it has to be worked on every day. But recently I realized that diving too hard into what you love can be dangerous. I found that I started neglecting other aspects of a well balanced life in order to do so. I would skip gym sessions, skimp on cooking and cut back on sleep to a dangerous degree. As I discovered last week, this certainly wasn’t healthy nor was it sustainable.
The unfortunate truth was that, as much as I love progress and that sense of accomplishment, I came to the ugly truth that my health was something I had to work on. I hate to admit it, but it took me some time to figure out just how to do that. The problem became simpler as I started organizing it as I did with writing and drawing. I schedule time to eat breakfast, lunch and dinner and when to go to the gym as well as time to read. It sounds ridiculous, it really does, but I found I had to do this to make sure I still got the amount of writing I felt I needed while still maintaining the important parts of a healthy life.
I think, however, the inevitability of things coming up is unavoidable. But sometimes it’s just something that has to be expected. It took me some time to understand this as I often sacrificed sleep to catch up on writing and editing. The past few weeks have taught me, however, that as much as I want to improve I can’t sacrifice my health for my writing. One of the obvious signs was actually how badly I struggled to write out my own thoughts. It was really unpleasant and I hope that my fellow writers don’t fall into the same mistake as I had. Disciplined writing is amazing, but not at the cost of my health.
I hope this helps 🙂
– Raphael
PS: I apologize for missing a week of posting. Part of that was a result of what was discussed here. But I hope to not miss any other posts!
Raph's Cozy Musings 