Welcome to Thoughts for Thursday! This feature is our outlet to talk with you about whatever we currently have on our minds. It might be bookish, it might not! Now for this week's thought:
The Funk is Over!
For a while there, I felt like I was in a review-writing funk. For some reason, the words were just not coming to me and I was really struggling to write my reviews. I've never been one to crank out a review in 20 minutes, like I know some of you can, but I could usually write one in, say, an hour once I got going. But it stared taking me SO LONG just to write something that didn't suck and that caused me to keep putting off writing them. I've had this happen before, but not for this long a period of time and that's when I really started to worry that I had somehow burnt myself out - why else couldn't I find the words to express myself anymore? I was scared of what that would mean for this blog if that continued. I didn't want to be forced into taking a break, but for a little while there, I could see no alternative...
I don't know if the funk was a consequence of me being overwhelmed with everything going on in my life - I was super busy and stressed for a while there - but it took a very low-key Christmas break for me to finally ease out of it. My Fall semester of school ended, work slowed down over the holidays and for the first time in forever, I had consecutive days in a row with nothing to do except unwind and relax. I had plenty of time for reading and blogging and it was around then that I noticed I was getting my grove back.
As I got back into the swing of things, I realized that confidence had played a role in my review-writing funk. During the funk, I was beginning to lose confidence in myself as a reviewer, but after writing a few reviews that I was proud of with relative ease, I started to regain what confidence I had lost and things just kept getting easier. I knew I could do it and so I did. After a couple weeks like this I have caught up on reviews for the first time in a long time and I feel like I am on solid ground again, which feels great when starting a new year.
I don't know if those of you who regularly visit our blog noticed any difference in quality - I tried not to publish anything that wasn't on par - but if you did, thanks for sticking it out with me.
Now to turn it over to you guys, has this ever happened to you? It's super scary and I'm wondering how you might have dealt with it. It took a well-timed break for me to recover but I was lucky for one of those. Is a break from blogging the only answer otherwise?
I don't know if the funk was a consequence of me being overwhelmed with everything going on in my life - I was super busy and stressed for a while there - but it took a very low-key Christmas break for me to finally ease out of it. My Fall semester of school ended, work slowed down over the holidays and for the first time in forever, I had consecutive days in a row with nothing to do except unwind and relax. I had plenty of time for reading and blogging and it was around then that I noticed I was getting my grove back.
As I got back into the swing of things, I realized that confidence had played a role in my review-writing funk. During the funk, I was beginning to lose confidence in myself as a reviewer, but after writing a few reviews that I was proud of with relative ease, I started to regain what confidence I had lost and things just kept getting easier. I knew I could do it and so I did. After a couple weeks like this I have caught up on reviews for the first time in a long time and I feel like I am on solid ground again, which feels great when starting a new year.
I don't know if those of you who regularly visit our blog noticed any difference in quality - I tried not to publish anything that wasn't on par - but if you did, thanks for sticking it out with me.
Now to turn it over to you guys, has this ever happened to you? It's super scary and I'm wondering how you might have dealt with it. It took a well-timed break for me to recover but I was lucky for one of those. Is a break from blogging the only answer otherwise?
