An Ounce of Foresight is Worth a Pound of Exhaustion

I lost my story post last week due to an errant keystroke.

One finger, pressed down at the wrong time over the wrong key, cost me hours of work and the sleep I sacrificed for it.

Hundreds upon hundreds of words vanished into the ether in the blink of an eye, and I alone was responsible for both their existence and sudden lack thereof.

I immediately slammed my keyboard home and huffed my way to bed.  I was furious; at myself, at my keyboard, at my post, at the cat which once hissed at me for no good reason six years ago.

I was angry about everything.  

You see, writing the posts and stories that I do comes at a steep price.  Every single week, from Sunday evening to Monday morning, I give up sleep to make these words happen.  The time as I write this sentence is three in the freaking morning.

I have to go to work in three hours and train my backup how to do my job.

I wish to be an author and I have been willing to pay any price to make it happen.  Yet…  my life and the decisions I make within it are no longer things which concern only myself.  I’m also a father and a husband, a friend and an avid video game / board game enthusiast.  Writing cannot be all of my existence, because there are greater priorities which have already laid claim to great swathes of my time.

So there’s me last week, head in my hands as I stare down the barrel of no new content generation, a missed post, and I still don’t get to sleep.

This morning, as I sat and stared at the screen while desperately sewing together the scraps of several failed writing sessions to create this blog post, I realized that I can’t keep doing this to myself.

I’m still overweight, despite the forty-five pounds I’ve lost this year.  As much as I want to be an author, I also want to make it to my forties thank you very much.

As has often been the case in my wild and wonderful three year authorial journey, it’s time to adapt or perish.  Literally as well as figuratively.

To keep things on track, to maintain the pace and goals I have set for myself, I must now adapt in a way that I have so far been unable to in thirty-four years of living.

I must get ahead of schedule.

I need, not want or would like or should probably, I need to find the gumption to push out ahead of my deadlines and stay there.  There cannot be any further reliance upon all-nighters and energy drinks the following day if I’m to make it over the hill without the aide of a hearse.  

Even if it means mothballing The Quill until I am sufficiently up on posts to allow myself a few weeks of breathing room, I have to be willing to make these changes.

Dying is no way to make a living.

Tiredfully,

The Unsheathed Quill