After six days of making stuff, do you need a day off?

A famous novelist was once asked if he writes on the weekends. He replied, “Only amateurs write on the weekend.”

I think it was V.S. Naipaul who said this. He was a helluva writer but kind of a jerk about a lot of things, which is why it was probably his quote. It’s a cruel and elitist comment. How nice that the world has allowed you to not write a couple of days a week; some of us have to create things whenever we get the chance, which, for me, is usually the weekends.

Still, it’s useful for any of us creatives to take a break from time to time if only to recharge our creativity. I mean, even God took a day off.

Lately, my days off have been through the sin of overcommitment. This past Thursday I went to dinner, followed by bowling, with family. Anticipating the loss of my evening, I’d taken the afternoon off from work to allow myself time to write.

There was an errand to run, but I thought I’d have plenty of time to write before dinner.

The errand, however, was taking our dog to the vet, which turned out to be a three-hour trip. Like the three-hour tour made famous by Gilligan and the Skipper, it was more than I bargained for.

Dealing with the dog and the medications we had to start him on following the vet visit exhausted me. There was no creative energy remaining.

I was raised in a white-collar family with blue-collar work ethics. My grandparents worked in factories, steel mills, and coal mines. My parents approached life with the grim resolution of doing the work and complaining little. They taught me and my brothers what they had learned about life.

That part of me is hard to shake.

I’ve been writing in the evenings for forty years now and I know what I’m capable of creating in the evening…which is not a lot but at least something. I fully anticipated less-than stellar productive creativity on Thursday, what with dinner and bowling, and had arranged to also take Friday off of work.

What happened on Friday, though, is that I slept in until ten o’clock, giving me the most sleep in months, since my surgery. I had so much rest, I took me a minute to remember who I was.

A few minutes later, a friend invited me to play pickleball, which I did, because it's fun and it's exercise. I was going for the self-care trifecta: rest, exercise, and fun. Then I did some chores around the yard upon my return home because, well, no one else was going to do that work.

So my day off, taken for writing, was not spent writing. I fully embrace it. That evening, though, refreshed from the sleep and break in my routine, I felt like thinking about creativity and my novel again.

There wasn’t an astounding boost in productive creativity, but I wanted to engage with my passion work again with a renewed desire.

It’s absolutely true that, if I were a commercially successful writer, my day job would be my passion project, and my evenings could be fully dedicated to friends and family.

Until such a time that I can write from 9-5, I’ll have 5-9 and the weekends for writing. That, however, is a long walk off the short pier into lake burnout.

What I need to do is schedule more, and better, breaks into my work.

I need to take a gentler approach to my schedule for creativity, especially now that I’m advancing in years, to ensure I have the brain energy to deliver creativity to my projects.

We all need to treat ourselves more like divine agents of a joyful spirit of creativity, even if our art delves into dark matters, so that the best of our unique gifts can be applied to our work.

Take days off.

Accept invitations from friends and family to spend time together.

Look for fun things to do, and do them with your whole heart.

When you return to your art studio or writing desk, the creativity will flow.