hiatus

from Mirriam-Webster:

“an interruption in time or continuity”

a break from everything.

time to step back from the day-to-day, the pressure, the rush.

space to breathe.

enough freedom to distance yourself from your life for a moment, so that you might reexamine, assess. make changes, or not. on the way to becoming all that we desire, we often lose sight of who we are in the present.

a moment extended, until you feel like it’s time to return home (home being, in this case, less a physical location and more the surroundings and emotions that ground you).

a period of time in which to step away from your thoughts, your conversations. to relax and let it all flow out the window, like the wishes you tied to balloons as a kid.

periods of reflection and exploration help us to remember who we are.

because sometimes we lose ourselves in the process of getting someplace else.

hiatus.

a return to self, a reminder to fully embody this life you’ve been given.

when I say full I mean full, I mean late night conversations that dig deeper than how-are-you-fine-thanks-and-you.

when I say full I mean full of moments that allow you to be at peace in them. full of conversations so intriguing your words begin to stumble over one another in an effort to drop from your lips and your eyes light up as you listen to the words someone else is sharing. full because the photographs you saw today made the corners of your mouth twitch upwards, because you witnessed a stranger and an act of kindness and you were cognizant enough to notice. full because your work reflects your passion, or makes you happy, at least, because you did something today that brought joy or hope or happiness into someone else’s life, and in doing so invited more of all these things into your open heart.

full is not quite the same as busy.

for those of us who push ourselves in the direction of our dreams, busy is not something to strive towards for appearances’ sake but the result of a life of passion. busy is what happens when your goals are bold and brave and beautiful.

but busy sometimes wraps itself around us, catches us so tightly in its’ web that we grow weary and begin to lose sight of the shimmering curious desires that brought us to busy in the first place.

reawaken them.

for me, hiatus is:

exploration. what’s new in the world? is there something at hand I can learn, discover, do? what’s shifting, changing, growing, disappearing in my life? who am I, lately?

hiatus is less time around people, more time to let myself think without interruption. time spent in silence.

running without a watch, without strava, without others. running with music, or without. running for me, for my soul. running without considering pace or effort or races. running for the love of it.

blank pages. white unlined paper, fresh ink and the beckoning of a story to be told, words to be arranged, sentences to be unraveled. so many spools tangled in my head begging to be relaxed and let out to play.

courage to play with words and angles, courage to release the fear of judgment and let my writing be what it is. it is my hands, it is my mind, it is my heart that has decided to craft these words in this moment and I understand that the nature of this craft is that you have to let it be sometimes.

time to read, finding new stories to enchant and beguile.

hours to work on myself, my projects and goals. staying up until 3 in the morning with a half-drunk glass of wine to the side of my notebook, having grown distracted by a novel I’ve become obsessed with, not worrying about the fog of exhaustion that will flood my skull tomorrow because this is my time and it is necessary.

maybe I will turn the music up and dance until dawn.

how much time do you spend indulging small curiosities?

there exist hours to consider where I’m at and where I might go from here.

hiatus.

I understand that there will never be a perfect world in which we can take massive blocks of time away in peace and solitude for ourselves- or whatever hiatus looks like for you- and have it feel easy. there will always be work and jobs and school and family and friends. and all of these things are wonderful but

take time for yourself. an hour, a day, a week. it’s important, I promise. it’s important to know who you are when left to your own devices, outside of your obligations, outside of the rules, the lines and boxes you check off when you finish your tasks for the day.

we get caught up in life.

I love it, truly, this busy, this rush but when it stops feeling like love and fire and light it’s time to take a break in order to come back stronger.

and when you return home, whether you are jarred back into things by circumstances beyond your control or you easily flow calm and ready back into your soul..

bring your hiatus with you.

the lessons, the memories, the inspiration and creative spices littering your mind. let them sink in, add flavor. soak.

return refreshed.

return inspired, awake.

return alive.