I’m sitting in the dark little apartment I’ve rented in the Palm Beach neighborhood of Aruba. It’s I:47 pm and there is nothing I want to do more than go to the beach. Sun, blue blue sky, jostling coconut tree fronds and the knowledge of the Caribbean a 10-minute walk away are infinitely distracting. I’m waging a constant battle in my head. You said you were going away for a week to write. You said you were taking your first vacation since August 2019 to rest your brain, your discipline, your creativity, and your soul. So which is it?
Four days in, I have hit the very obvious realization that the need to rest is winning out over the need to dive into my writing. When I booked this trip, I had a vision of getting up at 8:00 every morning, walking to Starbucks, writing for an hour or two, doing yoga, going to the beach for another hour or two. Then returning to, again, write for another hour or two. Leaving for dinner, taking a walk on the beach, coming back for a final 30 minutes of writing. That’s not what has happened. Not even close.
I sleep until 11:30 (because I’m up until 3:00 reading on my little patio and listening to strange night birds communicate with each other). The anxiety sets in immediately. I’m not going to have enough time to write. I get my latte and sit down for my usual 30 minutes of daily writing. But now my anxiety shifts because I start to realize I am wasting precious time in this beautiful place staring at my laptop screen. So I stop, go to the beach, swim, read The Witch Elm, drowse in the sun. But I’m still feeling vaguely uncomfortable. What about that small writing project I hoped to get back to? What about the cache of blog posts I planned to get a head start on?
This morning I reread Anne LaMott’s “Radio Station WFKD,” and imagined two radio stations speaking into each of my ears. I took a minute to listen to the dueling voices: Write more. Get to the beach. Do both. Don’t waste your time. Life is short. You’re finally away from email and the gloom of Boston. Write a lot and relax even more. Then I turned the volume down.
That’s the moment when the little voice whispering in my head said in a clear whisper, “hello, you don’t go to Aruba from Boston in dark cold January to sit in a shadowy air-conditioned room in front of your laptop.” Vacation is vacation. Write a little, sure, then put it away. And when you get home sign up for an actual writing retreat, with other people who are writing, where there will be structure, community, and accountability. Where the whole point will be to sit with your thoughts and fall into the flow of thinking and constructing sentences and paragraphs.
I’m packing the laptop now, not opening it again until I get to the airport. When I get home, I will look for a writing workshop to sign up for. In the meantime, I will keep at my daily, 30-minute writing sessions. Maybe I’ll even try to plan a vacation where the laptop stays home.
