a light, loving touch ... or a poke in the ribs?

that man of mine keeps walking this really whack line between "here he goes now, he's about to get all awesomely productive again" and "welp, there's another rabbit hole he's fallen into on youtube, dang!"

like, he totally keeps edging up to getting back to work on his current book, which he's halfway done with and has been halfway done with for maybe four or six months? and he writes some notes and he outlines some stuff and i'm like, yes! here comes the actual writing! 

but then he just gets sucked into some passive digestion of one kind of entertainment or another, anime or tv shows or youtube reaction videos or (i am partly to blame for this) a recent manga binge until i find myself trying to figure out, at what point should i get pushy with him?

i do a lot of sitting on my hands in these cases. it's actually true that sometimes these lazy-ish dawdling periods are secretly allowing something juicy to simmer in the background that i'm not seeing because he doesn't even necessarily know it's happening himself. and then enough stuff will click that everything comes together and he can totally crank on the story until it's done. so i don't want to poke and nudge and clear my throat too much about getting him back on track, because it might just turn out that there's a process going on that will evolve the story into something he can catch fire with, where if he tries to push it instead, he'll end up trudging the plot into a corner that makes him lose his enthusiasm even worse.

so i try to be the gentle, supporting claire who kisses him on the cheek and doesn't ask too many questions like, "what the hell are you doing and why isn't that awesome story getting any longer?!?"

but as a reader, i'm impatient. i love his writing! i want more! and as a girlfriend, i know there is an enormous fulfillment he gets from finishing a project.

so at what point do i stop holding back and say, "hey! we're in lazybones territory now! this isn't process and percolating anymore, you're just slack-crastinating! get to it!"

there are, after all, a number of activities that, if i get pushy about them, we both end up really enjoying.

anyway, long story short, i keep looking at his ribs and getting a really itchy index digit.

the poke is coming, dude! get cracking, or so help me ...

xoxo,
claire