I’m away for work training this week, which means my days will be filled with hours of seminars and way too much food for the level of inactivity we’ll be forced to endure. Caffeine will be in high demand but do little to improve our levels of alertness during the various sessions. In the evenings, many of my colleagues will seek escape from the tedium by going out to dinner and maybe doing some shopping. Our training conference is in a college town, so there is no shortage of interesting shops or bigger chain stores. Unlike them, however, I plan to spend my evenings catching up on some reading and working on writing out the beginnings of some new stories that have been wandering around in my head.

Trips like this one are a great opportunity for me to escape my typical disttactions. I’ve left my laptop behind so I can spend time writing by hand. Changing up my writing format in this way can help redirect my attention to word choices and sentence structure, because my handwriting looks much different than the fonts I use when typing. (If your handwriting is illegible even to you, this approach obviously won’t work for you, but perhaps a change in font will help you achieve the same change in focus.)

Being away from home takes away distractions such as family demands or household chores that must be left on hold until I go home again. There’s no guilt or worry over delaying things that are beyond reach. There’s no pressure from friends or family to be social and to put my reading or writing on hold. So even though this training is a far cry from being a vacation, it will still prove to be relaxing nonetheless. I’m looking forward to this week and hope to make progress that I’ve put on hold for months due to other projects taking priority. And hopefully when I head home again later this week, I’ll have something significant to show for this time away.

Hezzie