TANJA PAJEVIC

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Permission to Rest and Recharge

Happy holidays, friends!

As the year comes to a close, I wanted to reach out and share a few resources I’ve found helpful.

What Do You Want to Call in for the New Year?

For many years, I’ve used Susannah Conway’s Unravel Your Year workbook to honor the year that’s ending and clarify my intentions for the New Year. Some years, I do the full workbook while others, I dip in and out, focusing on the topics that most call to me. Even if you do a simple, scaled down version of this exercise, I think you’ll find it empowering.

Some of my current intentions include the permission to play, have fun and course-correct.

To get there, I’ve given myself permission to let go of what’s not working. Part of that is releasing projects that have passed in order to engage what’s really calling me.

Suffering vs. Joy

The older I become, the more I find myself releasing lingering remnants of the suffering artist archetype. We get to choose, after all, so let’s choose well.

Life is short, and our days are precious.

To that end, I wanted to share a documentary Ken and I watched the other night: Stutz. Wow! I’m not much of a movie person, but this one had a huge impact on me. I highly recommend it if you tend to get caught in challenging psychological rabbit holes, like many of us creatives.

Sabbatical

As you may know, I’ve taken a pause from teaching. Like many others, I find myself in a period of transition after the past few challenging years. They’re all good transitions: more time with my high schooler, who will be off to college soon, more time with family and friends, more time writing. After teaching creative writing for the past 20 years, I needed to take a step back.

Sometimes we need to step away in order to recalibrate. That’s where I’m at right now. For the time being, I’m doing work unrelated to creative writing, which has been fun to explore. As an added bonus, this shift has freed up more energy for my writing. So I’m thankful for that.

I’m also very thankful for you. Community becomes more and more important to me with each passing day.

So I wanted to let you know that my teaching sabbatical continues. At some point, I’ll be back with renewed energy and inspiration, but for the time being, I’m leaning into the unknown. And I’m finding lots of magic there.

Wishing you a wonderful and magical New Year!

Tanja

P.S.: I went into the holiday season looking to rest and recharge, then promptly broke my wrist! So if you email and don’t hear back from me, you’ll know why. I’m on the mend, but in the meantime, everything is taking me 10x longer than it normally does. (Thankfully, I’d already written a draft of this post, which I meant to send out two weeks ago.)

Hope you’re enjoying a kind and gentle holiday!

2 thoughts on “Permission to Rest and Recharge”

  1. I love your website and your writing tips. A writer friend of mine sent me a link to your memoir tips on Jane Friedman’s website and I dove in! Currently starting a memoir (that I’ve had too many false starts on to count!) and am determined to see it through this time.

    Thanks for your valuable insights on the process – hope your wrist has healed!

    Reply
    • Thanks, Stacey! I’m so glad you’re back into your memoir! It sounds like you’re right on track — for many of us, it can take a few different starts to really get into the heart of what we’re wanting to write. Excited for your progress!

      Reply

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