Brad Salomons

Category: work life balance

  • sick days

    I had lofty goals for 2024 and one in particular got vibe-checked by my wife early on. “I’m gonna try to write every day, all year.” I had told her. Her response was simply that, “there’s gonna be days when that doesn’t happen. Don’t overcommit.”

    Sure enough, the last week of January found me waking up in the wee hours of the morning one day with gravel in my throat. Not literally, of course, but you know the feeling. And it would turn out that I had a case of low-grade bronchitis or some other kind of respiratory infection that would all too quickly turn me from a creative, writing machine into a couch potato napping though a binge watch of old sitcoms and occasionally playing some video games to pass the time between coughing fits.

    I couldn’t do much.

    I definitely couldn’t go running. I could barely go for a walk with the dog, to be honest. For about four solid days it was all I could do to hobble down to the kitchen to put the kettle on for some tea.

    I also couldn’t write.

    I don’t mean that in the physical way, either. That is, I probably couldn’t have sat for long stretches at the keyboard and type anyways, but also I literally could not write. The part of my brain used for stringing words together into coherent sentences was off on leave, exploring a fog-covered mountain and otherwise simply out of the office. My brain had taken a few sick days.

    I went four days without writing more than a few words—sitting down to type and then quickly realizing that my mind was not there participating.

    And to be honest, I was upset.

    There went my writing streak. There went my 2024 goal. I was not even through January and I’d already botched it up by being sick. 

    As it turns out keeping myself healthy was actually important to accomplishing the things I wanted to do.

    I was mad. Yeah. Of course I was mad. 

    But recall, as I say that, that my brain wasn’t working all too well either.

    The Friday morning of that unproductive week my brain punched back into work, right back to its usual creative and philosophical self and immediately had a few choice words to share, both in print and just inside my own head.

    “Go easy on yourself. There’s gonna be days when creativity doesn’t happen. Don’t overcommit.” It told me, and though I couldn’t help but notice my brain was plagerizing the wisdom of my wife, I had to admit that it was right.

    There’s gonna be days. And you’ve got to be ready to forgive yourself and move on. You’ve got to be able to let yourself heal, recover, rest, or simply chill.  You are not a machine. You are a person. Even a guy without a real job needs a sick day (or four) once in a while, too, and that’s just fine.

  • less sugar

    As we pass into the new year we do so knowing that in our privileged little suburban world the greatest hardship many of my friends and neighbours faced this past holiday season was the great sugar shortage of 2023.

    Making light of the granulated white is fair in a world torn asunder by war and disease and climate change, but even a handful of people I’m connected to on the socials found themselves hugely impacted in their businesses by the shortage. Usually those business involved turning sugar into consumable treats, but business is business and it’s tough to run a bakery when your number one input is not only spiking in demand because of amateur holiday bakers but in short supply because of a labour disruption.

    I am also making light of it because as January begins and the season of sweet delights fades into the memories of another year passed by, I am officially in mild withdrawal from my attempt to re-adjust my caloric intake after two months of candy, cookies, holiday baking, and copious sweetened beverages. I literally have a mild headache as I write this, and I am fully blaming it on the fact that I have had virtually no refined sugar for at least twenty-four hours.  

    As I sat down to plot out the topics to include in this first edition of what I’m hoping will become a monthly newsletter (or routine posts if you’re reading this on my blog) I struggled with the idea of adding a “health” category. But the reality quickly overcame my senses that the third leg of my creative tripod is a healthy body and well-nourished corporeal being.  That means that what I eat and how I exercise and even how much I sleep plays a huge role in how able I am to put words onto paper—and thus is worth writing about.

    I’m not a doctor, though, in case that fact was not clear from the other anecdotes shared here, so reflect on these opinions with a grain of salt…or a grain of sugar if you can find one.

  • inspiration

    I spent the weekend in the mountains and shortly after I arrived I snapped a picture of our view of the peaks from near the hotel. “Seeking inspiration.” I wrote on some social media post somewhere and hit the publish button.

    We talk so much about inspiration and what it means to be inspired, yet putting out fingers on how that manifests is difficult.

    Is it a sense of clarity and calm?

    Is it a burst of creative energy?

    Is it literally the view acting as though a muse?

    I didn’t know what I meant when I wrote “seeking inspiration” but the inspiration that found me was real and unique and may have profoundly changed the tone of my novel, bringing to my story a gravitas I might only have found by wandering the streets of this place where we’re visiting.

    Perhaps then, inspiration is just an openness to big ideas.