Tuesday 22 September 2015

Stepping back

I had two amazing conferences in August - the Get Fresh in '15 Romance Writers of Australia conference in Melbourne (go team!) and the Love Thrills Romance Writers of New Zealand conference in Auckland.

I spent a lot of time networking and talking to people - catching up with old friends and making new ones, and generally having a great time doing this.

But it also made me realise that it's time for me to step back from major volunteer work. I had mentioned in an earlier post how I had been struggling for a while now. This was brought home to me when I was exhausted really before the conference in Melbourne properly began. I remember thinking 'how am I going to do this for another year?'

The simple answer is that I couldn't. So thanks to the help of some wonderful friends in RWA who had seen my struggles, I have been able to step away from my two major roles in the organisation, keeping only smaller roles to keep me giving back. I'd wanted to continue as I'd given my commitment but in the end the best for everyone was for me to remove myself from the roles and allow people who are fresh at them.

I'm in handover mode and once this is done, I'll be reviewing my writing direction and seeing where best to put my energies. In the meantime, I'm enjoying reading again - I hadn't been able to read as I'd been falling asleep as I was so tired and anything I did read wasn't being absorbed.

All rugged up for an early morning walk in
New Zealand - used to seeing AM from
the other side.
I have also stopped studying for the moment - and really I'll review if I'll go back. I think I garnered what I needed from Tafe and while I didn't earn my qualification, that hadn't been the reason I'd been studying - in fact, I'd gone in with the idea that I wouldn't earn a qualification and study as long as it suited my purpose of developing some design skills to help with HelzKat Designs, which I have. I'm not going on to a design studio so the qualification isn't the important factor. I'd also been there long enough to see the course change and change again that it wasn't the original course I'd signed up for.

The truth of the matter is I have only so much energy and on good days, fabulous, I can do a lot of what I want to achieve, but good days are not my norm. I have okay days on the whole, but CFS and Fibromyalgia can change how I feel from moment to moment. It's not easy to adjust to this- I still struggle after so many years - but every so often, I'm reminded that it's not only okay to rest, but it's absolutely necessary.

I have missed blogging and talking to you all and sharing. So I'll be back online when my time is my own again.

~Yia~




3 comments:

AJ Blythe said...

Proud of you (as I've said). This is *you* time now. Enjoy!!(((hugs))), AJ

Marilyn Forsyth said...

Good to see you taking some time for yourself, Eleni. xx

Eleni Konstantine said...

Thanks, AJ. Your support means a lot, and I'll take those hugs. xx

Marilyn, thanks for stopping by and for being a great supporter. xx

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...