An Unplanned Sabbatical

Not that you’d be able to tell from the amount of posting on this blog, but recently I was forced to go without access to the internet and my laptop for 2 weeks.

While hardly in the realm of a life threatening problem it affected me more than I would like to admit.  Indeed the anxiety it produced was frightening. 

Now, I have happily gone without access to a computer and internet for periods of a week.  But this was different.  This was a loss of control, a not knowing when/if I could get things fixed.  A not knowing whether or not all the programs that I use in my various activities would still work/be available to download.

As an example I am currently reinstalling software.  The Live Writer Program I am using to type this blog post is a latter version of the one I was using and I have lost all the plugins from the previous versions.

I still don’t know if the recording software I use for my Galactic Chat interviews will work… and so on.

So reading this now, with perspective, it seems such an inconsequential thing but the disruption to my wellbeing highlights for me an issue.  It’s a signpost that too much of my creative self uses the computer and internet in its processes.

So…

while I was offline, isolated (apart from brief visits to the nearest town library) and participating in a writing workshop/program facilitated by Jodi Cleghorn, I did a couple of things.

I began writing longhand.  And not just grabbing any old pen but using the Nib and inks (pictured above).  I found the act of writing, particularly with the tools above, almost meditative. My anxiety certainly reduced.

I am contemplating writing short stories and at a later stage perhaps a novel in longhand.

The second thing I did was dig out an old book by John Naish called Enough.  It had some interesting things to say about living a life of “Elegant Sufficiency”.

I am keen to implement some of his suggestions to see if there’s a positive affect on my creative life.

There’s also some positive news on the pubication front, but I’ll leave that for another post.