Ebbs and Flows and Writing Rhythms

My blogging practice fell off a bit last week--but if I'm honest, I think I've been missing a day or two each week for months.  In some ways, I'm OK with that.  In other ways, it makes me feel a bit panicky.  My other writing practices have been in decline too, but I've told myself that as long as I blogged daily, I would be O.K.

I'm not sure how I came to this line of thought.  I used to say the same about my morning pages, 3 pages written longhand, each and every morning.  Blogging fills the same purpose in some ways:  part journaling, part getting out of my own way, part recording of things that will otherwise not be remembered, part inspiration, part duty.

Even in this time period of more flexible schedules, I still have trouble balancing all that I want to do.  Is that true?  Or is it more true to say that some writing I no longer want to do?  I still love the idea of writing novels, but I also realize that my novels are likely to remain unpublished.  I still love writing the novel as a project, as something that keeps me entertained--but these days, with so many schedule disruptions, I'm not likely to see a novel to completion of the rough draft, let alone revision.

Before our Labor Day travel and our COVID infections, I was getting into a poetry rhythm.  I had actually composed a poem or two to completion.  My more usual practice over the past year or two (or more?) has been that I write a few lines, have a few more ideas, write a bit more, run out of time, never return to the draft.  My older process was to think the poem to completion before writing anything--I did wind up with more completed poems, but I lost more ideas too.

Obviously, both approaches have pros and cons, but I do wish the poetry part of my brain was feeling more inspired on a daily basis.  I was going to write that I should try reading more poetry, but I'm actually reading quite a bit of poetry as I prepare for my in-person class each week.  

I tend to be hard on myself for all the scrolling and internet reading and online ways of "wasting" time.  Some that time could be better spent.  Some of it is class prep.  Some of it will come out in poems in interesting ways.

I am grateful that I'm no longer spending time, so much time, getting ready for accreditation visits and doing the documenting that is required of administrators.  I do not miss that kind of writing, although I was skilled at it.

Let me do what I always do:  trust that my processes are at work, while also looking for ways to have more writing in each day.