Consider writing as part of your self-care. You need air, water, food, shelter. At the next level of caring for yourself, you need warm clothes, boots perhaps, and take-out pizzas after a long week on a Friday evening. Some might consider cable tv a bare necessity. (I say that like it doesn’t describe me.) Some need massages and transcendental meditation. We all need family, friends and to fit in, belong. But there is also a secondary drive… to stand out.
Writers need to write. It is a deeply-seated urge, that is an instinct. Abraham Maslow, one of the earliest positive psychologists identified this need – not a luxury or an indulgence, not something we do if and when we find the time, but a psychological need.
What a man can be, he must be. This need we call self-actualization.~Maslow
You can go 264 hours without sleep, and about 30 days without food. Only about 3 days without water. Or 3 minutes without air. The question is, how long can you live without writing?
A musician must make music, an artist must paint, a poet must write, if he is to be ultimately at peace with himself.~ Maslow
Not having time is the most frequent excuse or complaint I hear from my clients. Sure, we’re all busy. But weigh the cost of not having peace. How much time-loss does that create? Without peace, we seek comfort in food, booze, creating drama in our lives… All big time-sucks.