Vocational Jumpstarts

Odds are good that you’ve experienced a writing drought. Maybe you’re in a slump. Or a funk. Maybe too many other things are just flooding your schedule, but today I thought we could address vocational jumpstarts and how that can help us jump back into writing, too.

God gives us all multiple vocations. We are called to love our neighbors, whatever kind of neighbors they may be, and we are called to care for our possessions, for example. People and physical dominion shape ongoing circumstances, tasks, and obligations.

There is good news. There are fresh starts in our vocations. Maybe they are more occasional than we’d like, but, God-willing, we get to rest sometime and then return hopefully in a better position.

Yes, I’m simplifying. Yes, I’m choosing to keep to positives. 🙂

But I’ve long held the theory that rest isn’t quite what we sometimes imagine. I think resting from people, for example by gardening, can be a partial rest that can then help, in turn, not accost people. Like little people who walk on my green beans.

Now imagine the simple suppositions above and turn it into a web. I think checking the mail in pleasant weather at least gives me a few moments of quiet before returning to tame in-house chaos. Talking with my dreamy husband helps me keep my cool with my kids. All sorts of various and seemingly random relationships help with mundane and exotic tasks and obligations. Bits and pieces helping me to stay me, even while tasks and chores challenge me to grow into an older, more experienced me.

The thing is, sometimes we’ve got to receive a little something before we can hop back into spinning all the plates we’d like to keep going.

Vocational jumpstarts are ok. Take a vacation. Rest on a weekly Sabbath!! Honestly apply the realization that you are not keeping things together, yet the world continues to turn.

How can you get back into writing after years off? Maybe you’ll enjoy a sunset and want to write about it. Maybe you’ll get mad at something on the Internet and you’ll find yourself typing up an article for the Federalist.

A Mysterious Force Known as Readability Demands at least one Heading so “Vocational Jumpstarts” 😉

All sorts of cycles are swirling through your life, and all sorts of thoughts will spin through your head. It’s ok. Any one of things might give you a hitch back on track for writing, eating better, yelling less, etc. If you miss one, have you lost your chance?! Nope.

Now, it’s rare that divine intervention will point out that you need to re-edit something you wrote twenty years ago. Yet, our God remains active even in the details of our lives. We needn’t overlook what He gives us even in our most ordinary moments.

You know what’s great? Writing a letter to your grandma. Or a deployed soldier!

You know what’s not great? Thinking guilt will help you conquer a situation. Or that somehow you have to have the inner-strength of demigod. Sorry, being a child of God just isn’t particularly like that.

Wheels will turn. Prompts will come. Funks will pass. Or funk becomes trendy again!

We’re ok. We’re just writers. Sometimes writing comes and goes. Sometimes other things take precedence. And, sometimes writing will be the therapeutic time that helps us readjust back to our other activities and relationships. It’s not an all-or-nothing scenario. And, the biggest life-and-death situations we’re facing have already been answered with the greatest Word, the perfect Word, the Incarnate Word, our Lord, without any writing or merit on our part! Thanks be to God and to Him be all the glory!

 

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Filed under As Christian Writers, Inspiration, Question Asked, Theological reflection, Writer's Life, Writing Tips

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