Shannon, I don’t know you but I’ve grown to care about you and I’ve been worried about burnout. I’m glad you took the mini-vacation. That’s a start. And I can’t add anything to what you’ve written here because ultimately those decisions are yours and yours alone.

But I’m happy that you’re thinking about it. Because I had a friend, a prolific novelist, who wrote her heart out while her boys were growing up in order to give them a good life, and when they grew up and moved out, only then did she realize that what they wanted most was a mom who was a mom and not a writer.

I wrote about Shonda Rhimes a while back, about her book, “Year of Yes”, which deals with this very issue. If you haven’t read it yet I highly recommend it.

And please don’t be so hard on yourself. Everyone needs to regroup and reboot now and then. It’s healthy and it’s liberating in the end.