News

Happy Easter; Happy Passover; Happy Eostara.

Jon and I didn’t really celebrate any of the above holidays today. We both worked. Jon on getting the new server up and running. Me on going through my writer’s notebooks and filing the pages. I used to do that every time I finished a notebook. File ideas: Anita ideas, Merry ideas, ideas unrelated to either series. I woke up this morning knowing that I had the beginning of the next Merry book in the last finished notebook, but at the time I wrote the opening I was too stressed, too overwhelmed to see it. I was so negative in my head that it just didn’t ring true. This morning I remembered it and knew it was the right one, I just had to have enough perspective to realize it. It’s funny how a negative mindset can suck the happy goodness out of everything. So, I have my opening, and I have more notes on the book, plus notes on Anita, and lot’s of other things. I have been working so hard for so long that I just let the organizational things that helped me work better go by the wayside.

We had to bring on the new employee part time this last week, because we needed the extra hands. Carri asked me what my work schedule was, so she would know how to work with it. I told her I try to get to my desk by 8:30 or 9:00 in the morning, then a break for lunch between 11:00 to 1:00, then back to work. I either broke when Trinity came home from school, or Jon rode heard on homework and I worked until dinner at between 6:00 and 7:30. I worked at least two to four hours on Saturday, but tried to take Sunday off. Carri said, "That’s about fifty hours a week minamum."

I thought about that, then shrugged and said, "Yeah."

I hadn’t really understood what I’d been making myself do, but that was my schedule for eight years. The last two years, I’d been slacking off a little, because I was tired. My muse was tired. My idea factory in my head seemed to having a work stoppage. Sherry, whose worked for me the longest, before Jon, before Darla, there was Sherry. She doesn’t deal with the fans, or go to events, but prefers a quieter work mode. She said to me a few months ago, "Are you ever going to be able to not work this hard?"

I said, "No."

She looked at me, and said, "I know you’re successful and doing great, but if I knew I was going to have to work this hard forever, I wouldn’t be happy." Sherry never complains, never says things like this, so that should have been a sign that maybe I needed to redo my schedule. But I just tried to power on, until I just had to take a break. This last month is the longest I’ve ever gone without making pages in my adult life. I have never taken this much time off. Was there room in the schedule for it? No. Was it absolutely necessary? Yes. I feel better, refreshed, as if I can finally look out and see that there really is a horizon, and not just a keyboard in front of me. This coming week I start working with my staff to make our operation work like a company, like a real business. We’re going to implement paperwork and scheduling and all that stuff I hated in corporate America, because I’ve discovered that you need some of it. You need it to keep track of things, to know what everybody is doing, and to find out if the resources available, including personnel, are being used well. I finally had to accept the fact that I am a writer, but I am also a boss, and it’s time I started acting like one. Sigh, but part of that sigh is a relieved one.