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Remember the pandemic?

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 No? Me either. We don’t really think about it these days anymore do we? It’s only in reading my past blog posts that I remembered we had a pandemic just a couple years ago. And it ruined my writing life, if I’m being honest. I haven’t published anything since before the pandemic. I just couldn’t write during the lockdowns and I never really picked it back up. I won’t say the pandemic completely ruined my life, because I’m happy now with what I do have and my loved ones, but it did change my life in very serious ways.

Mentally for me, the fact that it destroyed my ability to write did a number on my headspace. Eventually, I did catch covid. Luckily, it was after I’d had the vaccine. I was very sick when I had Covid and I know I would’ve been even sicker if I hadn’t been inoculated. Now that I’ve been diagnosed with hyperthyroidism in 2024 I realise the virus that damaged my thyroid came about when I caught Covid and it weakened my entire body.

So yeah, I’ve been suffering chronic illness since getting Covid and all the mental and physical damage that does to someone like me already struggling.

Today I asked myself, Self, how are you gonna get interested in things again? And the answer turned out to be doing things a little at a time. Since the pandemic, I’ve felt like I need to catch up on writing, Like somehow I need to have five novels written right now to make up for the time I lost during the pandemic. Which is actually ridiculous. The reason I write is because I love to. Thinking that I need to have a finished novel right now, I’m taking all the joy out of writing. So here’s what I’m gonna do, I’m not going to think about finishing an entire novel ever. I’m not going to stress about the saying that goes: finish what you start. Because following that has made me unable to finish anything! The reason for that being, the whole time I’m writing thinking I have to finish this, I am not enjoying myself. All I’m thinking about is getting it all done and getting it done too fast. That’s no fun at all!

Even if I have to start writing just five minutes a day for as many days it takes, That’s what I’m gonna do. I’m not going to pressure myself to write 1000 words an hour like I used to. I am not in my 30s anymore. I am 49 years old and next year I’ll be 50. I am suffering from chronic illness that affects my vision my head my whole body, and on top of that I have major responsibilities in life. It’s ok for me to bring my writing back to being a hobby.

By writing even for just five minutes a day, I can allow myself to be in the manuscript while I’m writing it. And that is the enjoyable part of writing. I get to be in the story and I don’t have to think at all about the story ever getting finished. The whole point of writing is to experience what I’m creating as and when, I love that.

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