The festive holiday season fills us with excitement, hope, cheer, enthusiasm, optimism. For several months we have something to look forward to. For many of us it is the excitement to see family and friends we haven’t seen is a long time, for others it’s seeing what Père Noël left for us under the Christmas tree, and for still others, like me, it’s the anticipation of watching loved ones open presents we chose and wrapped just for them.
Inevitably after the holiday season there is a period of blahs, the unavoidable doldrums as we look ahead to what can’t help to be mundane pursuits after the bright tinsel and blinking lights of such a heart-warming and lighthearted time. The lingering hangover from New Years Eve doesn’t help.
Here’s a perfect way to reignite your enthusiasm: write. Whenever I write, even when I have to force myself to sit down and put fingertips to keys, whenever I allow myself to be transported into the world I’m creating in my own stories, my spirits are always lifted, my heart lightened, my mind liberated.
It’s safe to say the time-constraints of the season have necessitated that many (most?) of us have had to neglect our writing, even if only for a couple of weeks or so. This is the perfect time to get back to it. It’s therapeutic, it’s fun, and it’s productive.
And it will keep at bay the post-holiday blahs.
Good advice, Kevin. I have so many project near completion that I only need to set my priorities and dig in. At least I don’t have to spend time taking down a tree and decorations because we stopped doing all that when we brought the cat and then the dog into our lives.
I agree. I’ve been so busy with the holidays and vacation plans that I’m way behind on my writing, and even though I keep thinking of plot points to add, I haven’t had time to write them down (or wasn’t where I could) so I’ll be lucky to remember them. I’m really looking forward to a writer’s retreat I’m going to next weekend and hope to get a lot of words on the paper.