I woke with a scratchy throat. An hour or so later, that was followed by chills and a fever. My energy was zapped and my strength gone by the middle of the day. I called for a substitute and went to bed at 1:00 p.m. 

I felt better by the end of the week. I decided to try to go back to work.  I was able to maintain control of the class (if you’ve ever been a classroom teacher, you know what I mean…kids can sniff out a teacher who doesn’t feel quite up to par…) until shortly before noon when the unthinkable happened: I lost my voice.

When no one is listening, the effect can be devastating.

What happens to us, as writers, when we lose our “voice”? When we just don’t feel we are quite hitting the mark with our words?

There are days, in any profession, when we are just “off”. For whatever the reason— illness, distractions, catastrophic events, difficulties in our interpersonal relationships, even changes in the weather—we just don’t perform to our expectations.

We become disappointed in ourselves. We may even feel that we’ve let others “down”.

It’s not realistic to expect ourselves to function at optimal levels every day.

We need to remind ourselves that although we may strive for perfection, it’s just not realistic to EXPECT it of ourselves in each and every circumstance. 

Things WILL get better.

We WILL reconnect with those creative ideas! We WILL discover more hidden talents.

We WILL finish writing that book or article because we were gentle enough with ourselves to allow for days when ideas germinated, rather than flowed easily onto the page.