InBox Blues

My inbox sits at 25 emails this morning, which is better than it was yesterday but still enough to make me twitchy. It’s a little reminder that my routines are off, and that we’ve been working at the edge of burnout here in Casa Del Brain Jar.

It’s also a reminder that I won’t bounce back automatically, just ’cause I want too. Getting back to writing will take effort, as will clearing email and getting back on top of all my other projects.

One of the downsides of working from home–particularly a small flat like ours–is the potential for the space you work and the space where you deal with the big things life throws your way bleeding into one another. The little distractions you embrace to cope with loss or distract yourself during periods of high stress linger around after the cause of those behaviours is gone.

The housework you let slide because you didn’t have the bandwidth is still there, needing to be done, as you try to kickstart your work brain and force it to wrangle a list of project that have been backing up.

Yesterday, I dealt with the deadlock by relocating and changing environments. Working from home wasn’t happening, so I buggered off to the local food court and did a quick 1,500 words before picking up some groceries.

Today, that’s unlikely to be an option for a handful of reasons, but starting is often the hardest part and I’ve cleared space on the writing desk that was used as a pig hospice for the last two moths. With luck, that will help things run smoother than they did yesterday