It dawned on me the other night that I must have written at least 150,000 words on this blog alone. To see if that was indeed the case (and because of course, I have way too much free time), I decided to check it out. I added up the words in all the entries I’ve written just this year and it came up to nearly 25,000 words.

That’s a lot of words!

So I’ve been doing my journalism work, and without even noticing, have written 25,000 words just on this blog? In a year that I got married, went on honeymoon and took almost a month off? And I say I don’t have time for a book? Way to go on the priorities, woman!

Last week was one of those weeks I dread having. Three deadlines were looming, I didn’t feel like working so I’d been procrastinating on getting started on them, I’d been a bit too social and had scheduled lunches with editors and freelancer friends for three days in a row, and eventually, after four days of feeling like I’d gotten absolutely nothing done, I sat down at my computer, got myself worked up about getting all the stuff on my to-do list finished by the end of the day, and refreshed by browser. And… nothing. The Internet conked off, and didn’t come back for four days.

I don’t usually have Internet problems, so I hadn’t counted on this happening. Power going out, yes, I can handle that. Internet going out? I can’t handle that.

I should have made the best of the opportunity to catch up on my reading, write some fiction, work on an essay or write some blog entries. I could have just called it a day and got together with people for lunch. Should have, could have, would have. I stayed at my desk, getting stressed, and waited for the Internet guys to show up (which they did about three times– still no fix).

For all the slow talk, I’m still a bit of an obsessive about my Internet and my daily schedule. So on the second day of no Internet, I decided to take a deep breath and relax. If I had no Internet, I had no Internet. I could stress about it, but it wouldn’t bring it back any faster, so I started writing (and boy did I sound like my mother right there). I wrote a new series for the blog — Freelancing Fact or Fiction — which you’ll get to see in a few days, I opened up my journal and wrote in it for the first time in months, and I sat down with a writing book I’d bought a few weeks ago but hadn’t gotten around to reading. It was nice. Not all that productive, but nice.

Maybe I’ve just been kidding myself with all the “busy-ness.” If I can write a couple hundred words each day on the blog without a second thought, what possible excuse can I have not to do the same for a book? They’re both non-paying, but at least one gets me closer to a life goal. (I’m not saying I’m going to stop blogging, I’m saying I’ve finally run out of excuses.)

So that’s a revelation. Oh, and this blog entry? 551 words.