Jeremy C Kester

Four days passed. They passed by almost without warning, and certainly there was no remorse as they sped by. Time passes with unabashed vigor, laughing almost as I stumbled through. And this time, I really did stumble.

Life has a funny way of throwing reminders out that we are not in control. All that we can do is try our best to move fluidly along with the events that happen here and there. In this case, it was a spontaneous business trip, a strange mishap (self-inflicted), a known event, and another spontaneous event all swirled around together that prevented me from not only updating this site last week, but also from writing for 4 straight days. There might have been a few spots that I could have sneaked some time in, but even when reflecting back, it would have been tough to manage.

Essentially, I fell in a hole. But that happens from time to time. No matter how much I might want to believe that I can force things to happen a certain way, life will occasionally send those bitter reminders. Given that writing is still very much a hobby (and might remain to be exactly that throughout my days), it will often need to take a backseat to life. Hobbies are great, but I have to face it that as of right now, this isn’t even a meager part-time job; writing is a hobby.

I am going to go away from despairing about this point, though. It is more than a hobby, even though it is just that. Meaning and purpose (beyond that of family and career) is derived from it. Why else would I do it even when my Switch sits nearby beckoning me to play more video games, or the latest Netflix show is tempting me to watch? I choose to write when there are so many other things to do. (And let me be honest, they often are more fun and certainly easier to do than writing…)

What I am going to do then is to take last week and learn from it. Those 4 days of non-writing hide within them lessons that I can take into the following weeks. My mission is to find those lessons and put them into practice. Only then will I be able to truly climb from the hole and avoid the next one.