I've been under contract to write a book, and have made extremely slow progress on its completion. This Fall, I went through a period of reflecting back on everything I'd done, and figuring out whether I could complete my book remaining as managing editor. Given the depth of my responsibilities at Tikkun, I realized that I couldn't, and that I had to make a choice. I chose my book. Joel
---------
I certainly understand that. I've tried to paint or write and discovered I couldn't do either if I was working all day---and these were blue collar jobs that only required time and no thought at all.
Time is the problem. I just needed hours, days, sometimes weeks just to mull or visit with people, go other places, generally lighten up the mind. Relax. Or alternately, I needed hours, days, weeks of serious committed and un-interrupted time to work on a project.
I worked up most of the background material on Strauss when I worked only four days a week at a very slow pace job. The problem was I couldn't just take off work and blow off a couple weeks when I had some insight or inspiration. I had to go to work, and that alone just killed the effort. It was horribly frustrating and gave me a bad temper at work. This temper business just set up a vicious circle and killed whatever motivation I had.
Anyway, best of luck to you too. E-mail is also a great killer. So I'll buzz off now.
Chuck