As I stated earlier, I’m blogging less. I’m taking quite a novel approach to this activity: blog when I feel like it, abstain when I do not feel like blogging.
I decided that there are enough things in my life that I do out of obligation. Like go to work and earn a living, for instance; that activity alone takes up about 12 hours a day. These obligations compete with my list of deep desires. Like write my novel, an activity that ought to take up 12 hours a day but sadly does not.
When I was on vacation…I got to a calm place in my head, a place I had not visited in quite some time. Things finally became still, in a good way. I got a bit of clarity. I wondered why I had not taken better care of myself. I wondered why my daily activities were not aligning with my longterm priorities. And given the Chinese ban on blogging, I experienced a change in my writing routine: I could not and did not blog for two weeks. And that granted me even more clarity.
So–I decided to make a change. I would focus my energy on obligations/duties/responsibilities…and on things I really WANT to do (when it comes to the things I do have a choice about). Starting with blogging. I would not blog unless I really WANTED to blog.
Anyway, that’s just boring reiterative stuff.
Today I want to blog. My hubby has left town on a long (more than two nights) business trip and I am going crazy with loneliness. I spent half the day in bed with the covers over my head, feeling the heat of the day pound through the walls, despite the air conditioning. Then I went grocery shopping, an activity that makes me oddly happy. Produce makes me happy. Yes.
And now I’m back at home again, feeling…empty. It sucks. I miss my husband already.
I have all the time now to write my novel and I cannot, because this emptiness overwhelms me. It overwhelms all thought. Perhaps I could write about my main character in his greatest loneliness (ugh! I should log off this post pronto and get on that!).
Okay, thank you blog, for getting me on the right vector.
p.s. the above picture was taken at Shanghai’s Pudong airport.
Writing Under a Pseudonym 
I think that is overall a good thing: to do something optional when one “feels like it.” I have barely blogged at all in the past month and I really miss it. I feel like I have an enormous backlog of blogposts in my head and can’t get them out.
I’m sorry about that empty feeling. I think it is an excellent idea to channel it into your character!!!!
The clarity is always there waiting for you. Tap into it and write. And I love sentences that start with “Today I want to . . .”
I understand the emptiness. My husband occasionally travels for weeks at a time and I find it very challenging to sit down and write. I want to keep myself occupied with busy work so I don’t think about how quiet the house is. And this is coming from someone who lived alone for 10 years. Weird, how these things change us so fast.
the empty feeling is not really my friend per se but an ever present companion.
having a baby didn’t really make it go away. I’m just more distracted often.
i am new to your blog. this is a good idea you have to just blog when you feel a need. when it becomes like work…then it brings less pleasure.
Interesting to come here and read about emptiness (for one thing) after reading adoption blogs, which seem to blame it on adoption. I just finished quoting Carl Jung, who said, “I am an orphan, alone,” although he was not alone and was not an orphan. But he thought we all had that orphan experience.
Anyway.
Also good to come here and read about your vacation and what it did for you unexpectedly. I was just lying outside by our pool in a lounge chair, under an overcast sky, napping. And I was thinking about vacation in my head, about my lazy and wonderful childhood and about how part of me is always longing to get to that place again, that place when I did not have to act out of duty so much, and had free time and someone else took care of me. Well, who wouldn’t dream about that? Hah.
But it does me good to come here and read about something similar in your world, Jade, because I think it’s always good to try, try, try and focus on what we really want and what gives us joy and strength and all that. It’s not the job we are paid for, usually (is it?). I had to work at my job that pays the bills today, and I detested it because my helper is on maternity leave and I have more work to do; the whole time I had this undercurrent to my attention to the details of my job–it sounded like sirens singing! Some beautiful song, some deadly song.
But one of these days I just may go in that direction anyway.