Will's Break: One Month Down

First off, I intended to blog at the beginning of my break, but I had to give up before I smashed my computer into little tiny pieces.

When I tried to blog on the first day, Weebly (the service through which I managed my site) mandated a password change before I could log in. I reset my password, and my password reset went through, but the email to change my password didn't. Leaving me lunging at my laptop with a hammer while my loved ones wrestled me down.

Fortunately, cooler heads prevailed, so I was able to start my break peacefully. At the time, I intended to stay connected through social media, so it didn't matter if I blogged at the beginning or not.

But I quickly realized that I need a break from social media too.

When I checked my Reddit or my Facebook or Twitter or whatever, I was mentally still working. I kept thinking about the next book, and what we could do later on in the series, and basically still thinking like an author.

I needed to cut that off, so I've been on a strict no-social-media diet for a month now.

I did not expect that to be necessary, and it's been difficult, but it's been good for me.

So that's where I've been all this time, cooped up in my Regeneration Pod with no phone waiting for my Reddit addiction to die down. Which begs the question: what have I been doing?

Well, in the first week off I didn't do much of anything. I don't remember much. Probably many YouTube videos were watched. I pretty much coma-d non-stop.

Second week, I spent most of my time catching up on my reading. I read between a million and a million and a half words that week, which was nice and refreshing as I haven't done that in a while. 

I spent some time in a cabin in the woods, played a truly disgusting amount of Minecraft, bought the Dragon Ball manga (now I own the complete series; I only had the DBZ half before), and picked up my re-read of One Piece where I left off last year (right after the Paramount War arc).

Essentially, I've been having a nice, relaxing time! There's a lot I wanted to do that COVID prevents--visiting friends, traveling internationally, cruising, forming a Team-Rocket-style evil organization to take over the world--but within those restrictions, I've been having fun!

Physically and mentally, the break has been great so far, and while I regret having to step away from you guys for so long, I definitely needed it. It's only this week that I've stopped thinking about the business and book sales and the future of the series, because it took that long for my previous thought patterns to reset.

I'm installing a manual reset button in the back of my skull to expedite this process next time.

-Will

P.S. For all you One Piece readers out there, I'm regularly amazed at how great One Piece is and has stayed for so long. What great, resonant, emotional storytelling. Having said that, Punk Hazard sucks and I hate it.