Quitting is easy. Coming back is chaos.
You are David. Your unfinished work is a monolith. Goliaths don’t even compare. In fact, Goliaths don’t even compute. A monolith is–we’ll take the second definition please– “a large and impersonal political, corporate, or social structure…”. I repeat, a large and impersonal structure. Yeah, you want to take this on? Good luck!
But you’re smarter and more talented than all that. You don’t need this advice. You can take a day off, a week off, two weeks off, a month off, three months off, a year off, three years off, five years off and come back to your last sentence just like riding a bike. But do you know what that analogy doesn’t tell you? It doesn’t tell you that once you start riding the bike again there will soon come a day when you sit down on the pot and it feels like you are being drawn and quartered. Getting back on isn’t that simple.
The reality is that when you take too much time off from your current project, when you come back to it, your last sentence will read like this:
∇§¥£ϖϒπΞþýþΞΕΔΖçÕËÌ∏∼∫∑≥¤ΟΠηζφ.
And when you finally decipher it you will begin to cry because it will say, “You fool! You do realize that you have no idea what you are talking about anymore. But let’s be honest, did you ever? What business is this of yours? Your time has passed. Go find your calling in life. Clearly this isn’t it.”
I’m not making you feel good am I? Hey, if you’re lucky you might only question why you ever wrote in the first place a couple of times! There is a silver lining, after all.
Let me ask you something; and it’s something you are going to have to ask yourself because no one else cares. After taking so (read, too) much time off of your project, why are you doing this? (Don’t worry, this is the part where I build you up.) Why do you write in the first place? How have you come to know the world? We are talking philosophy now. Are you tied to your writing on an existential level? What’s the one skill that you possess that has helped you the most? If you’re like me, it is and will always be writing. Writing is a crucial key to understanding myself and the larger world around me, that has always seen me through. It has never failed me. But I have failed it. And isn’t that the same thing as saying that I have failed myself.
Tell yourself this, that you will not give up. Tell yourself that you will not take months off, that you will not take weeks off, that you will not take days off. Because when you do, you just slow down the good and speed up the bad.
Author's Pathway 