When something you love becomes too much, it’s time to take a step back and reflect. When the thing you love doing becomes a burden, it’s time to stop and reevaluate why you're doing it. When you find yourself putting that one task last on your 'to-do' list and you begin to hate it for everything you've loved it for all this time, stop.

Do not continue to do it. Stop before you fully and completely hate it. Stop while you're ahead. Take a break from it and breathe.

For me this 'thing' has become writing. Writing used to be fun for me. I enjoyed writing and I've always excelled at it too. Lately, it has become too much and I am beginning to hate everything about it. I'm beginning to loathe the QWERTY keyboard with the little black square keys labeled with little white letters. The sound of my fingers hitting the keys used to be satisfying and watching the cursor move filling the screen with my thoughts was a wonderful thing. Don’t get me wrong, I still find the sound satisfying, but I no longer get delight in it. I still find the screen filling up with my thoughts as the cursor moves wonderful, but it has lost is magic.

I used to be flooded with thoughts and ideas about what I would write about each week and now I find myself plagued with a deadline I know I’ll never meet. My articles lately have been slightly better than mediocre.

I no longer look forward to writing and no longer wonder if submitting two articles in one week would be OK because I am lucky to come up with one that’s at least half way decent.

I do not like to write about topics that have gone viral because they’ve already gone viral, therefore the Internet doesn’t need one more article thrown into the loop that no person will read because everyone is already tired of seeing that trending topic. I prefer to write about things that matter, but aren’t as popular. There is only so much you can write about animal rights, human trafficking and even pointless, menial topics that no person actually cares about. There is only so much you can write about that appeals to a bigger audience than just you, your friends, your family or even your town. The reason that ‘there is only so much you can write about’ is because eventually, you will start to sound like a broken record and people will stop listening and stop engaging. People have already begun to stop engaging, and I haven’t even repeated any topics.

That brings me to another point about my writing, I work hard to get my work out there and hardly anyone responds. I feel like it just sits there and is ignored. Half of my shares come from me sharing in on pages and groups on Facebook. People cannot keep expecting me to do this when I am getting no feedback, criticism or support.

You can’t expect an actor to keep acting when he isn’t getting any roles and you can’t expect a singer to keep releasing albums when no one listens to them.

I’m not leaving Odyssey forever. I am only taking a break. I need to take a step back and reevaluate exactly why I became an Odyssey writer. I need to reflect on all the reasons I love writing. I am no longer writing to the full extent that I know I can because I am no longer inspired.

I will be back in a few weeks, but for now I am signing off.