Back in 2015, I went on a wilderness writing retreat in the northern woods of Minnesota. I recorded a Write Now podcast episode about it (including some of it from the three-seasons porch of the little hermitage where I stayed), but today, I realize that the episode lacked a little bit of perspective.
I had taken off two days of work for the retreat, and built it around a weekend for a total of four days of writing bliss, but… well. Nothing really ever goes as planned, does it?
During this retreat, I… crashed. Hard. I remember being incredibly disappointed about how much I slept during the retreat, and how little energy I had to churn out pages, no matter how much coffee I drank. I got a lot of reading done while lying down, which was nice, but… the retreat just wasn’t the magical, genius-and-caffeine-fueled productivity session I’d hoped it would be.
And, looking back six years later, that makes perfect sense.
In 2015, and for years before and after it, I was at my utmost stressed and burned-out. I was giving my all to my day job, running meetings, volunteering, ghostwriting books, producing the Write Now podcast, starting my speaking career, and working on a novel. I was exhausted. (I even realized later that I‘d had walking pneumonia for several months in there, too.) Perhaps you can relate.
So it makes sense — send me out to a peaceful little cabin in the woods, and OF COURSE I’m gonna SLEEP FOR FOUR DAYS.
But at the time, I was really upset about it. I kept thinking I wasn’t TRYING hard enough, that my HEART just wasn’t in it, that I was SQUANDERING this amazing opportunity to create something brilliant.
I even remember going on one of the countless walks that I took over those four days, berating myself with each step that if I wasn’t going to create the great American novel, then I should at least be writing some poems. Really good poems. Like Mary Oliver-caliber poems.
Let’s be honest. Mary Oliver spent her entire lifetime honing her craft and creating some of the most iconic American poetry. She won the Pulitzer in 1984 and the National Book Award in 1992. There was no way that I, an overworked, exhausted, and stressed-out 30-something, was going to write anything even near that caliber in one weekend retreat.
What are you expecting of yourself right now? And — given your current state of mind, health, and the world — how reasonable are those expectations?
Words & warmth,
Sarah