Now that the Honolulu Marathon was behind me, I could focus on writing again.
Could.
I was still in Hawaii for another three days. With the marathon behind me, I had scheduled some time to recover from the race, and enjoy the gorgeous state. It was such a tropical atmosphere that I was able to wear shorts and T-Shirt comfortably in December. I couldn’t just squander this beautiful weather.
Hawaii being situated between the United States, Asia and Australia, I got to enjoy a variety of delicious food. Honolulu also had a couple of local breweries on the main street my hotel was on. I got to kayak in the Pacific, nearly losing my wallet because the compartment to keep your personal belongings in the kayak wasn’t closed or secure, something they only told me AFTER I returned my rental. I was out and about and on my feet a ton in the wake of my first marathon.
There was some jotting down of notes for the story idea that had started to fester in my brain. I figured once I returned home, with the cold weather keeping me cooped up indoors, I’d be able to focus on fleshing out the idea then.
Except…it was the holiday season, and there was still so much I needed to get done.
I had bought a couple of Christmas gifts while I was in Hawaii, but still felt I had the bulk of my shopping left to do. And I host my extended family for Christmas Eve, and even though I had started preparing and freezing some of the dishes before leaving on my Hawaii excursion, there was still so much left to do on my to do list.
When I returned to work, there was also catching up with everything that had happened in the week and a half I took off. But in addition to the vacation I’d just taken, I was also taking one in between the holidays, so I was not only catching up, I was also planning ahead, and that entailed taking my laptop home with me and logging on in the off hours to make sure my team had what they needed to do their job. After Christmas passed and I was on vacation, that’s when I could really start to focus on crafting this story.
Except when Christmas had come and gone, there was only one week left in the year. And I’m really anal retentive, and didn’t want to end the year with a new project that wasn’t anywhere close to being finished if the alternative was to just wait a week. I was going to be (back) on vacation after all.
I convinced myself there was no point to rush into working on a new story until New Years. 2023 had been a big year. Dig Down had placed as a finalist in multiple contests, I’d had not one, but two script consultations for it. I’d attended my first film festival, and ended up going to multiple ones. And I’d recovered completely from my knee issues with Lyme to run a marathon. As I’m looking back on it while I right this, this was all something to be proud of. It makes me feel less guilty about the break I gave myself until the start of the next year.
And when January rolled around, I didn’t come up with any more excuses to keep from writing.