summer plans, or what if I'm no longer motivated to write?

first, I want to think about some healthy balance. this summer, since I'm not going to Israel and I'm not teaching -- I think every day I'd like to:

• clean some small area that isn't cleaned regularly, or garden. something about the house.
• call or write to a friend. contact. connect with others in a larger community.
• work on teaching tasks. as much of the overload fall semester to be prepared in advance.
• read (possibly for writing, possibly for fun?).
• walk, if I'm not at the gym that day. or swim. or bike.

cooking, hugging, blogging, family time, sleeping -- all of those things seem to get done anyway. no, the list is things that I don't do that I'd like to see myself get in the habit of doing. while losing weight with WW, I'm checking off 6 glasses of water each day (what a concept) and it reminds me when I've neglected to drink water. I need a little checklist of these tasks that I don't do easily or habitually, and maybe they would become part of my daily habits.

what does this have to do with being motivated to write? I think that I'm bogged down with other tasks (or postponing these other nagging tasks) so that I don't ever feel free to think about writing. going to have to figure where the writing part fits in to my priorities.

Comments

[Philosophy Factory]

This is why we spent the week before vacation cleaning and sorting out our badly neglected apartment. As long as the cats aren't having wild parties at our place while we are gone, it should be in decent shape and turn into our own veriosn of dissertation camp :).

My plan is to give myself permission to goof off in the late afternoons, when I'm not very productive anyway. I'll write in the morning (post coffee....) and probably some in the evenings. I

I'm also planning to keep a "to do" list handy to write down stuff I'm tempted to do instead of writing.... especially stuff that would take me out of the apartment. When I want to goof off and when I take my day off every week, I'll do those tasks and fun things.

Your first full-time year will carry a lot of pressure to do committee work etc... The best thing I did was to pick one good, active committee and stick with it.

[Nels]

Sounds like a great summer. I may follow your lead about contacting people!

[App Crit]

Good luck finding the balance in your summer.

PhF, the "dissertation camp" is what I did, too.

Cheers to all