Two weeks ago, the eastern side of the United States experienced a heat dome*, a phenomenon where descending air compresses and stays around, building up heat in a wide area. In this case, the entire East Coast. Living in the eastern part of Pennsylvania, I was “lucky” to spend the last three to four days wishing our air conditioners were just a little better at keeping our place cool. The unit in our one room on Tuesday had trouble keeping the room under 80 degrees Fahrenheit (26.667 degrees Celsius, I didn’t spend too long to insert the degree symbol). It was not a comfortable week.

But, we’re past that, and every day outside of the heat dome I experienced has been nothing short of a delight. It’s still hot outside, but our evenings are much cooler, making it comfortable to go to bed at night. My wife and I had a rough few nights of sleep when it was still absurdly hot at around 9:00 PM/21:00 PM, so I’m not taking the below 70 (or 21.112) degrees in our room nights for granted!

Vacation

Last week cooled down a lot, which was perfect timing for us to travel down to the Durham/Raleigh area of North Carolina. It wasn’t as it was last year—thank god. The weather was hot, but not brutal heat—it was bearable. We celebrated our annual Fourth of July trip down to my sister-in-law’s. No fireworks this year, but we went to our spot at one of their parks to swim and have some lunch there. Another great trip down, and now we’re back home and very tired.

The unfortunate part of the trip was towards the end, when my wife and I started getting sick**. Started with sore throats, then I got a fever, and both of us have stuffy noses and coughs. We were miserable when we got back, and I was still exhausted from the 6+ hours of driving the day that we left. It wasn’t until this Wednesday, when I started to feel like myself again, and I’m not sucking down fifty cough drops.

Slumps

The reason for why I wanted to write, is because of this the slump that I’m in.

I’m about a month, maybe two, into what I call a slump. Where my desire to sit down and write is just not here at the moment. I’ll sit down and write a page in my journal, that doesn’t change, but anything else, specifically creative writing, is where I’m finding it hard to want to do. My novel has been sitting on Chapter 8 for so long now, I haven’t submitted anything to publishers accepting stories, and both my blog and Substack are falling into weeks, almost a month of no posts. This is the worst I’ve been in with writing slumps!

There were a few things I tried to get out of this. I tried writing dice to come up with a short story based on what I rolled. On a trip to Barnes & Noble, I picked up two journals in which I started to write down whatever I wanted to write. There was a bit where I wrote a poem or two and jotted down some Spanish notes. So far, I haven’t felt the desire to sit down and write. It’s frustrating.

It could be because of my recent vacation, and family events happening over the last month — I hope it’s that, and not the end of my writing journey***.

So, for the writers out there. What helped you get out of a writing slump?

*I got my information for heat domes at: https://www.npr.org/2025/06/24/g-s1-74358/heat-dome-hot-weather-explained and https://weather.com/science/weather-explainers/news/2025-06-20-death-ridge-heat-dome-explainer

**We did not test to confirm, but it wouldn’t surprise me the possibility of us having the Nimbus Covid variant (NB 1.8.1) https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/nimbus-covid

***A little dramatic.