It’s been some time since my last blog post. I hardly started before life got on top of me and my writing and blogging both fizzled out.
At the time my job was taking its toll on my mental health. Most of you will know the drill, too much work and not enough staff. It seems to be how many companies and organizations operate nowadays. People leave but there’s no rush to replace them, yet the volume of work remains the same. This might be ok for a little while, but working under too much pressure for too long takes its toll in the end.
In the beginning, the stress slowed my writing progress but didn’t kill it completely. Occasionally I would write at weekends and I loved it if I had a few days leave. By getting away from the place it allowed me to clear my mind. The motivation to write was also there, after having a day or so to “recover” from work the words came back.
Although I was surviving in this existence, I was far from thriving. Plodding on day after day, with the odd few hundred words written here and there. What got me through was the hope that someday soon I could reduce from five days to four days a week.
Then it all went wrong
When we were in peak winter blues season, one of our house rabbits died suddenly. Gizmo had been with us for the best part of seven years, and her passing without the usual period of illness caught me off guard. 
I teetered on the edge of depression for a while, writing became less fun. In fact, everything I usually liked doing stopped being enjoyable. Blogging was first to go, it hadn’t long started so it felt easy to drop.
After a couple of weeks, I began to slowly peck away at writing, a sprint here and there. Then I found out my request to reduce my hours had been declined. The realization that I was going to have to keep doing that job full time sent me into a panic. My whole plan of having an extra day to me, to write, exercise and live my life went out the window. The day I found out, my mind wanted to freak out, what was I going to do now?
I needed to do something.
After a long discussion that night with my partner, I decided something needed to change. No longer able to cope with this way of life. The constant stress, and monotony of it all. I wanted a creative outlet, but the job I was doing caused me to be stressed which killed the creativity. This fed the stress as I wasn’t getting anywhere.
The next day I gave my notice in. I didn’t have another job or know what I was going to do. But I had some savings and I knew I had support from my partner if I needed it. The risk had to be taken, as I don’t know where the path would have led me if I’d not done anything. It certainly wasn’t leading me into a good place.
The stress started to leave me shortly after and the words started to come back. I soon found myself opening Scrivener and adding a few sentences here and there. The word counts aren’t where I would like them to be, but it’s a work in progress. By the time my last week at work came round I felt so much lighter and brighter.
So hence me being back on here again. I’ve allowed myself until the end of summer to re-focus and put my mind to some creative projects. The plan is to get a new job with slightly fewer hours in the autumn.
So let’s hope I put this time to good use and I have something to show for it when September rolls around.
Jonny Clark