JOMO -The Key to Getting Back on Track

If years were celebrities, 2020 would be Gary Busey (no offense Gaz).

It’s been a very, very weird year (and a bit threatening, to be honest).

Horrific bushfires were followed by a pandemic that people chose to fight with toilet paper forts. A world leader suggested we do a ‘cleansing’ and inject ourselves with disinfectant…seriously.

If we could pick up the phone and call 2016, it would definitely assume we were pranking it.

All the uncertainty of pandemic isolation has been jarring, so many of us chose to escape the reality of our crappy situation by filling all our self-isolation hours with activities. Mostly baking sourdough bread, for some reason. I don’t know why (it costs about the same to buy a loaf from a baker), but the heart wants what the heart wants…

Baking aside, the writing community jumped in, all guns blazing and announced ‘Not today, Covid!’ Conferences, festivals, chats, launches - they all went online. It was magical, especially for writers like myself in regional Australia who don’t usually get the opportunity to attend events like this. It was the silver lining that emerged from a horrible, coronavirus shaped cloud.

I signed up to every book club I could find. Sat through as many launches and talks as I could. Trawled Twitter looking for new authors to follow.

I was inspired.

It was a new world.

But…

Then I burnt out.

I remembered that I actually still had a day job. One that I had to go to, in person. I didn’t actually have any extra time, despite the fact that every media report was telling me I did.

Because I wasn’t actually self-isolating at all. I was ‘essential’.

I was going to work till dinner, then rushing home to attend the latest online thing. My initial excitement at all this access to creative content morphed into resentment at having to fill my time with productive things. I started to look for any reason to avoid attending online events that I had previously been really looking forward to. And I stopped writing. Again…

What was wrong with me?

Well, it turns out - nothing. Nothing was wrong with me.

I just wasn’t leaving any time for rest.

You know, rest? Remember her? That thing that humans need in order to replenish and function on the most basic of levels. The thing that feeds creativity and allows you to feel positive and motivated. The thing you cannot get when you fill in too much of your time with ‘stuff’.

So I decided to take some stuff out.

I decided to embrace the Joy of Missing Out (JOMO) and started saying no. I made a conscious decision to not try to ‘grow my community’ for a while.

I was pretty sure they’d do just fine without me (they had up to this point in history).

I stopped attending evening online events and instead, I started taking baths. Long ones. Sometimes with a book. Sometimes listening to a podcast. Sometimes in silence. I just hung out with myself, and didn’t try to learn anything, or engage with anyone, or be part of anything. Just for an hour.

And it was magical. Nothing made me feel better than doing absolutely nothing. All alone.

And what do you know, I started writing again.

Just giving my brain room to rest - giving my imagination time away from the chatter of the world (no matter how inspiring or well-meaning that world) - allowed it to find that creative part of itself that had gotten lost for a while.

JOMO - sometimes missing out is the best thing you can do for yourself.

But once you feel rested, do attend the author talk.

No, really, do.

They’re bloody great :)