Back from a week-long break and it was a life-changer. I haven’t had any time off all year and,
with three book releases very close together, it’s been a period of strong focus and intensity. But then I stopped. For a week. Holidays are underrated.
Earlier this week I found a TED talk titled The Power of Time Off by Stefan Sagmeister. He’s a New York designer who, every seven years, closes his studio and goes on a year-long sabbatical. He goes to Bali or South America and re-discovers design, plays with new materials and ideas and starts to think freely again.
I think everyone needs this. Creative work starts to feel samey when you work too hard for too long. You forget why you love it. As a writer, I’m also a business person. I have to make a living doing the thing I love but sometimes I become so stuck in my thinking and so mesmerised by the rectangular box of my laptop screen and that blinking cursor in the TwitWindow asking me what I’m doing now that I don’t even know what I’m doing.
Long live the holiday. Feeling loose and the words are flowing freely. I remember why I’m here and I’m trusting my gut again, rather than being owned by thinking.
T.
