I'll be back.

Today’s post marks the 29th post in this daily blog. That’s almost 6 consecutive weeks of posting, and if you’re not impressed by that, well, I certainly am.

There’s a small caveat, however. A “payout” if you will, but for which there is a solution.

Since starting this blog, I have been incrementally losing sleep hours. It’s not that it takes me such a long time to write and edit these posts, though it is a lot of mental prep. It’s the fact that committing to this work opened up for me a gateway of confidence and focus. I realized I needed to create a buffer of time (especially in the mornings) to accomplish all of the exciting and important things (like writing and editing this blog) that I am unable to do for the 7+ hour block of time that I am at my day job.

Seven hours a day is a lot of hours in a week not spent on all the work that is most meaningful to oneself, so I try to fit that work in literally whenever I can. Before dinner, then after dinner, then after-after dinner. At 6:30 in the morning, and then at 8 and then at 9. There were weeks when I was ferociously editing my poetry book. Getting up at 5:30 to get down to the cafe at 7 to sit there for 2 and a half hours without the interruptions I might experience at home.

I had planned to make a pre-orders announcement for that same poetry book on August 1st (the day this post goes live), but I simply do not possess the mental nor physical capacities to rally behind such an effort. Bed at 11 and up at 6:30 felt something like a noble sacrifice, at first, though I knew in my heart of hearts that such misbehavior would only create a ticking time bomb of sleep deprivation. There is something different about my face that I haven’t been able to place. Today I realized I simply look tired. My body hasn’t been the well-oiled machine that I have come to know it as, and that’s no good at all.

The first post that I wrote for Hold Me, Touch Me makes mention of how I might be inclined to take a week off here and there. Back then, I had a feeling that allowing myself such flexibility would only benefit the longevity of this project. And I was absolutely right. Knowing that I could take some time off whenever I needed to bolstered me through nearly 6 uninterrupted weeks of producing new writing, 5 days a week. 

And though stopping on a Tuesday isn’t very neat and tidy, I’m going to take a break for the rest of the week and through the start of the next to get all of my ducks in a row for the launch of my debut poetry book, Un-re-quiet-ed.

Sitting on my computer as the creator and keeper of Hold Me, Touch Me, night after night and morning after morning genuinely restored me back to myself again and made me feel like me. I am utterly and incandescently in love with this feeling of making new work, again and again, and of actually being able to call myself what I know I am but which I didn’t prove to be often enough: a writer.

I’ll be back, dear reader. Oh, I’ll be back…