I didn't post yesterday. It was the first day this year that I didn't post. Normally, this would have caused me anxiety, made me feel like I was a failure, even though I never made any promises to post every day this year.

It' s just this thing I do. I get really down on myself, and any misstep just becomes some cataclysmic proverbial mountain instead of the mole hill, or maybe ant hill, or maybe speck of dust that it actually is.

When I woke up yesterday morning, I felt myself get instantly anxious about what I should post for the day. Even though I hadn't made any promises, I had kept it up for 10 days already, and I didn't want to let anyone down. If I didn't, what if, what if, what if. This is a decidedly unhealthy attitude to have toward something as innocuous as a blog. I mean, it would be different if I were considering not breathing for a day or something. But while the process of writing and creation is important, it's not something I should wake up and immediately stress over.

So I resolved to take a break. To have some rest. And this caused me some more anxiety for a while. But once my day was in full swing, I just resigned myself to it, and what do you know. A little rest, a little destressing is a magically powerful thing.

I didn't post here, no, but I did fill a few pages in my notebook. Some ideas, some little prose snippets that popped into my head. It was great, stress-free, no-commitment doodling.

I do enjoy writing here, but sometimes I need to rest. And that's such a simple thing. Maybe that's another theme for 2014: Tyler finally takes stock in the simple and obvious. If that leads to a happier, healthier Tyler? I'm all for it.