This afternoon, I re-learned the fact that if you are banging your head against a writing wall, you can just stop trying to work on the thing. You can doze off on the couch instead, for as long as your brains feel like sleeping. And then when you wake up, you can make yourself a brownie sundae, using the homemade strawberry-rhubarb sauce your friend gifted you recently, which has been sitting in your fridge just waiting patiently for someone to eat it.

And then, it is quite possible that you will feel more awake and refreshed and able to tackle the writing thing.

Or maybe you won’t. And that is okay too. Sometimes brains need time to not-write.

Learning to slow down, to allow time for thinking, is not easy. But, I am trying hard to remind myself, it is really important to get past the notion that a person must be working every single minute–or that working every single minute is even productive. More productive by far is the taking of deep breaks (was supposed to say “deep breaths,” but I think the typo is better) and the remembering that thinking requires space and time. Not to mention periodic ice cream sundaes.