Recovering From A Slump
As I mentioned in my last post, I have not had much to say lately and nothing has suffered more than my personal writing – my blog. Today is the anniversary of when I started a blog. I remember being super excited. My plan after deciding on the kind of template, design, and style, was that I would write every day. Ha! So much for that. I suppose in theory, I could have written every single day. No excuses. But some days what I would have written would have been absolutely useless. There are days when I am sure that what I wrote was pretty useless. And there were entire groups of days, where I just got in a slump – with writing, with life – it was all the same.
As I am sure that I have written about before – I have a personality of extremities. As much as I quip about astrology, I blame it on my star sign – Scorpio. I either have everything together or everything falling apart and either way, it’s an intense everything together or falling apart. And during a slump, things get pretty bad especially in terms of my brain clutter. I was in a slump probably for the whole month of June. I was wrapping up my quarter, figuring out my summer plans and projects, and I honestly was just a little burned out. And I think that the best thing we can do sometimes is take our slumps as signs that we need a break. And a break I needed.
On the other hand, I am one of those people who needs ten thousand things to do, to be able to just do one. If I have only one thing to do and endless amounts of time to do it, it will feel like the most tasking thing in the world no matter how easy it is. And despite needing a break, and getting a break, I had to take a back seat on some of my would-be projects and have had less to do. I know I should be celebrating about having less to do but I enjoy being busy. And because I haven’t been busy enough, I have been less productive and being less productive makes me feel less motivated which put me in a slump. It’s a vicious cycle.
But alas, a few of my mentors gave me some advice about getting out of a slump:
1. Make 3 goals in 3 different areas of your life that are time-sensitive and tell people who you know will make you accountable.
2. Physically get away from your surroundings for a period of time. Sometimes a change of scenery will do your brain and body wonders.
3. Get a new hobby that involves you doing something with other people.
4. Get out of your house/apartment if you feel yourself about to watch 10 hours of television for the third day in a row.
5. Spend an entire day – organizing your life. Your apartment, your calendar, your emails, etc. De-clutter your life.
6. Find a few really good/inspiring books and force yourself to read them. Or if you must, listen to books. Nothing will make you feel shittier than learning about all the great things people are doing with their lives. And that might force you into a frenzy where you actually just snap out of your slump.
I highly recommend no. 6.