giving myself a break

I’m taking my own advice and giving myself a break.

Last year I started doing all these micro-habits—saving $5 a day, writing 10,000 words per week, and so on. I track them, because in some respects the tracking makes doing them satisfying. I can look back at checked boxes on days and remember I’ve been living the life I want. One of my favorite things is to see the rewards from doing these activities—bank account increasing, books written, etc. In 2021 already, I have 142k words written, and it’s week eleven. That means I’m about 32k words ahead of schedule.

In other words, I could take a vacation from writing for three weeks, and I’d still be meeting my goal.

I don’t want to take a vacation, though. I love writing. I’ve learned that action is so much more soothing than non-action. I’d much rather try to squeeze in all of my little habits each day than let one drop.

But.

There are times when I do need to stop because my perspective can get all skewed. I spent all weekend in my chair editing, and I had to debate whether to give myself a break from my word count goal. Because, after all, I wasn’t actually adding to it. (In fact, I ended up deleting two chapters.) For some much needed sense, I finally asked my husband if I could take a break from my word count goal because of all the time spent editing.

His comment: it counts as writing.

He’s right, of course. Spending 36 hours straight editing counts as writing. And yet as a recovering perfectionist, I need to tell myself to relax. I needed an outside person’s confirmation that I could relax.

I can relax.

It’s just hard to do it.

So, I’ve given myself a bit of a break—if by break I mean I don’t need to reach my word count goal this week.

And editing counts as writing.

Does anyone else do this? Get on a streak of doing something and hate missing a day? I know it’s healthy to do that, but I think there’s some underlying fear that it will snowball. I’ll take one day off, and then the next, and then I’ll be back to where I was before, not writing and unhappy.

I’m pretty sure that’s not realistic, though.

I’m writing this post to tell myself it’s okay to take breaks. That I don’t have to be productive all the time. I’m a human being, not a human producer.

And even if I love it, and it’s fun, I should still have some moderation. I can redefine what works for me.