As much as we love to write, it’s important to take breaks — to live your life and have new experiences, and to reflect and recharge so you can come back to your desk, ready to hit the keyboard again. Not writing allows you to gain the distance from your words, and thus perspective, which are both needed when it’s time to edit.

Being active every day makes it easier to hear that inner voice.

— Haruki Murakami, What I Talk About When I Talk About Running

Write every day, but don’t put your life on hold . . .

— Vincent Mars, “Writing as a Way of Life“

What do you do when you’re not writing? How do you reset and return to this dashboard, refreshed? What do you need in your day-to-day life to maintain balance: Running? Yoga? Gardening? Painting? Cooking? Today, publish your post in any form you wish, as long as you focus on one or all of these questions.

What do you do when you’re not writing? I worry about why I’m not writing. I think about what I could be writing, I worry if I’m really writing when I’m writing or just remembering. I worry if everything I do when I’m not writing is actually procrastination and avoidance. I think about who I am. I worry about what I am. I wonder about what I might become. I worry a lot. I’m getting better art not worrying but I’m not there yet.

How do you reset and return to this dashboard, refreshed? I don’t. Writing refreshes me. I don’t return refreshed, returning refreshes me. How do I prepare to write? I get myself right to write by trying to clear aware the distractions that sop me from writing – chores, paid work, depression; and I maximise the distractions that help me write – the things I need to occupy the inner critic like music in the background and snacks on hand. I’m doing my best to make writing my priority and the first thing I do and the first thing i get done. Like my writing I am a work in progress.

What do you need in your day-to-day life to maintain balance: Hope. And something to write on.