Daily Writing Streak Broken :(

After nearly two months of doing at least something on my novel every day, from about mid-April during Camp NaNoWriMo all the way to this past Monday, my streak finally broke.

To be fair, it wasn't my fault, and if it wasn't for the events of this week I don't think it would have happened at all.  Tuesday we had a very full day, and got to the barn at 10pm to grain my horses, only to find that one of them - Panama, the one who was very sick two years ago and needed a lot of care - had eaten free-feed hay all day without drinking on the hottest day of the year so far, and was very dehydrated and uncomfortable.

So we spent the next five hours walking him, coaxing mashes into him, and monitoring him for hydration, poop, and how he was feeling.  It took a while, but over time we got a total of almost 5 gallons of water into him, plus he pooped twice and peed once.  He was obviously feeling much better, too, so we felt pretty good at that point about leaving him.

I had been waiting until evening to work on my novel since we had so much going on during the day, so obviously didn't write that night.  It was after 4am before we got in bed, and I didn't sleep until nearly 5am, since I read for a while to calm myself down.

Yesterday was another busy day, this time on an extreme shortage of sleep, but we still made it over to the barn to mash Panama a couple times.  All the horses were obviously still quite full from the day before, and were eating their dinner very slowly; perhaps because of this, Panama didn't eat the entire mash we offered him around 4pm (they get fed dinner at 2pm).  He seemed very sleepy and was well hydrated, so I wasn't too worried, but we still went back later to mash him again, and that one he ate very well.

When we went out there to mash him early this afternoon, before dinner this time, he ate with gusto and actually hollered for his mash, something he hadn't been doing the last few days.  He's normally super vocal, so it was a good sign that he was back to that behavior today.

I felt so bad about not writing on Tuesday, but there was really nothing for it.  Last night I opened up the Scrivener project and refreshed my memory on where I was and what I intended to write next, but I was exhausted from Tuesday night and a lack of sleep, so I didn't work on it.

While logically I know it's okay that I wasn't able to write for a couple days, that sometimes other things have to take precedence, I still feel disappointed and slightly worried that I will have a hard time picking the habit back up.  For me, part of the daily writing habit is not making excuses or exceptions, because once I stop writing every day, it's far too easy to let the habit slip and eventually forget about it entirely.

So tonight I need to make sure that I work on my novel at some point, no matter what.  Even if it's just a little bit, to get back into the habit and refamiliarize myself with where I was in the story.