A word of advice: Don’t wait to take any of your company-issued PTO until the end of September. It’s a good way to get to the last quarter of the year worn down, if not entirely burned out. If this sounds autobiographical, it’s because it is. Now, I do have that vacation planned starting September 25th, but it’s being a real struggle to get there. Work has been very busy over the summer, plus I’ve still had major events to plan for (and train for, in the case of several cycling events). And on top of all that, we are planning a wedding. Phew. It’s been a long few months.

The good news is I’m not as burned out as I could be, all told. That said, the apathy is kicking in and my motivation to do everything I’ve committed to doing is…low? Not quite ‘not there’, but low seems like the right word. I have spent much more time thinking about writing than I have actually writing, but I’m trying to give myself grace there. There’s a lot going on, and it makes sense that writing as a hobby is going to tumble down the priority list as mental energy slips.

That said. I think, given my situation (and possibly given a whole lot of optimism about the restorative power of my upcoming vacations), I am going to plan on doing NaNoWriMo this year and pound out another first draft. I have a perfect idea for it, one that’s going to benefit from some thinking and some uncultivated word count thrown at it. While I still want to edit one of my existing novels, it’s become more clear to me that I need a plan, and the entire undertaking of editing and rewriting much more carefully is not something I think I have the activation energy for right this second. Of course, like every other writing plan I have I reserve the right to change my mind another two to four times before actually putting any words to paper.

I think the most important thing for me right now is to make it through the next couple of weeks and make it through (in a manner of speaking) my time off in September and October. It’s going to be a nice shock to the system to not work for a little while, and of course October is capped off by the gaming group’s Beach Weekend which I am (just like every year) eagerly anticipating.

That all said, I know (I was just talking about it today even) that I rarely come back from vacations ‘rested’, having usually just taken a big trip or planned a big outing (I am planning Beach Weekend again this year, as I have every year since 2021). It’s still a good break, it still gets you away from work, but generally you come back to work after a trip like that just feeling a combination of ‘drop’ and dread. My hope then, though there’s no reason to bet on this, is that the fourth quarter of 2026 just, I don’t know, lets up a bit. Maybe, just maybe, after Thanksgiving everything could just chill out for one goddamn second.

This is a pretty short update, but it is encapsulating my state of mind at the moment. As I think about it, November may very well be when the creative juices start flowing again; after all it was November of 2025 when I decided I should start blogging again and created this site. As much as this cycle is nothing new my hope is that the intensity is unique; in 2024 I started a new job. In 2025 we bought a condo and in 2026 we’re planning a wedding. In 2027, after said wedding occurs, nothing on the level of any of those things is anticipated. With that in mind, it may very well be that three and a half years of nuttiness actually ramps down in the next eight months or so. Exciting if true, but I’m not holding my breath for it yet. If it is the case, though, I anticipate I may make more headway on my creative projects after the rest of life gets squared away around them. One can only hope.