Thursday, September 2, 2010

The Summers of our Discontent

It’s taken me this long to notice a pattern.

Looking back on my blog (both incarnations) I notice that there always seems to be a lull… usually around the summer months. Then I rapidly make a few posts, making some stupid excuse up. Truth is, there is a valid reason, but I never really grasped what it was until recently.

As you may know, I work in the travel industry, selling tickets for our services. A very good job that pays well and has decent enough benefits. It requires a lot of mental gymnastics, but I am well suited for that task. The down side is that I am also the front line if anything wrong occurs. I accept that as part of the package. For most of the year, it isn’t bad. But come summertime…

Because of what has been happening with the airline industry, business for us has boomed. And you add in that since two of the main summer docking ports for the cruise ships are located both here and north of us in Vancouver BC, we are constantly sold out (and sometimes oversold). And doing business during that time, on the front line, your mind constantly working in overdrive with the passengers, something ultimately has to be dropped to cope. With me it tends to be my creativity.

I stop watching movies or television, because my brain is too tired to think. I stop drawing because I cannot concentrate. And I stop writing because it is too much effort when I just can barely function. I have tried in the past to prep for this by making a lot of posts in advance, but they never felt right when I posted them. So I have decided to come to terms with this problem and deal with it accordingly. From now on, unless that weird spark hits me, I won’t be making any effort for my writing during the summertime. I will not force myself to be creative, because that does nothing but backfire. So I will resume my postings, and hopefully can fully get back into the groove without the specter of the busy season plaguing me.

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