When someone goes through trial after trial, with little to no breaks from trauma, they often enter a phenomenon called “survival mode”. When one enters survival mode, because their mind has been at war with constant stress for a prolonged period, it continually stays on high alert, anticipating the next hit. As a result, one who is living in survival mode is prone to burnout and numbness, especially in creative pursuits.

I should’ve seen this coming. I’ve tried not to let it affect me this way. I’ve tried to ignore it and push on and get past it. Just keep moving forward as one of my greatest creative inspirations, Walter Elias Disney, lived by

But y’all, I’m here to admit that after four years of back-to-back hardships, piling on top of one another sometimes with not so much as a month in between to soften the blows, I’m smack dab in survival mode and I don’t know how to get out.

And I oh so desperately want to get out, because I miss the writer I once was.

I used to write 10,000 words a month, consistently. It’s the first week of July, and I’ve barely written over 10,000 words this year. Follow the Arrows should’ve been finished months ago, but I’m sure it’ll reach it’s 2 year mark before The End.

But survival mode isn’t only hindering my creativity. No, no, it’s affecting my reading too. I’ve read significantly less books this year than I have in the past several, and it’s not because I don’t want to read. I’m falling asleep on the couch more and am having trouble focusing. I’ve found myself rereading the same pages multiple times when I used to rarely do that, because the words aren’t sinking in.

I’ve mentioned some of the things I’ve been through in past blog posts, but those snippets barely scratch the surface. And when I mention what I’ve gone through, I feel guilty because I don’t want to come on here and constantly complain. Writing for an audience is a privilege and I’m thankful God allows me to do this and reach you with the written word. But I also want to be transparent with you readers who have taken time out of your busy lives to keep up with me here, and let you know that I’m struggling creatively. I recently cut my blogging schedule in half thinking my new job was the reason I was struggling to write a post per week, why I was too scatterbrained to focus on finishing Follow the Arrows. Turns out, giving myself two weeks in between blog posts has turned me into an even bigger procrastinator and has made me feel even more guilty about not writing as much.

As far as I know, nothing is wrong with me medically. My last check-up went great. All I can come up with is that, since I recently left a job that filled me with constant stress for almost nine years (not that it was the only stressor, but it was a constant one), my body has crashed into survival mode since it’s not producing stress hormones at the rate it once was. From what I’ve read online, when one’s body is in survival mode, creative pursuits often go onto the backburner in favor of healing the physical body that has been in constant fight-or-flight mode.

In other words, my body’s telling me I need to cool it, and I believe God is too.

What does this mean for my author commitments? Am I ditching Authoring Arrowheads for a while? Am I cancelling On the Flip Side‘s release?

No. Oddly enough, editing and preparing for On the Flip Side‘s release has been the one creative pursuit I’ve enjoyed working on this year. I also plan to release blog posts gearing up readers for On the Flip Side before its release. Those posts will come soon enough. But in the meantime, I’m going to cool it for a few weeks. Not pressure myself to write to get words on a page, but write because I genuinely want to. Not pressure myself to spend hours writing a blog post out of obligation and then proofreading it five times to make sure it’s “perfect” before publishing, but pouring my heart out to y’all when it matters and when I have something to say.

It’s time to kick survival mode to the curb. It’s high time I heal.

Thank you for sticking by me, Arrowheads, and thank you for your prayers. God bless you.

Aim high, stay strong, and always hit your mark.

-Allyson