First day back to writing after roughly two weeks off, which followed two–endless, oh so endless–weeks of ten hour plus days at work. The technical needs of a school are highly cyclical, and swing from the doldrums of summer, where crickets keep me upright, to the first months of a new term, where by the time I fix the seven problems waiting for my arrival on campus, three more emergencies beckon, one possibly tragic.

In the past few weeks, I discovered I don’t mind submitting my work, a task never pursued seriously or with any specific method until now. Very consciously I elected to get the product as right as I could manage, before investing any energy into selling it. Now that the “package” is together, talking it up is less difficult than I expected. And I don’t mind the waiting part, knowing full well I’ll never hear back on some queries, and other responses might take months–or years–more. There’s a reason for a query burst, a break to allow responses to filter back, and then a reload.

Far, far more difficult was not writing at all, a movement that rests on my actions alone. The longer I avoid it, the bigger pain I become. When I start taking nonsense personally, and the beer in the house seems to disappear, that’s a good indicator a “pause” stretched into the danger zone.

A place I prefer not to visit.