Welcome, Everyone to the Third Friday Fess-Up for August.
We Made it!!
There isn’t much to Fess-Up to this week. I’ve been productive all week, though not always on the laptop. There were a few days where I’d had to write long-hand in the time I had, but progress is progress, right?
I do have an interesting revelation\quandary for you.
I’ve been talking for the last few weeks (Like here for example) about balance, and making changes in trying to get there.
Practically from the outset, I started to struggle and I couldn’t figure out why.
My focus had been centered around getting enough sleep, which I figured was around 8 hours.
Now I normally get up during the week at 5:30 am to write. I figured that hitting the sack at 9:30 would net me a solid eight hours. Easy enough, right?
Not so much.
It turns out that what I was trying to do was, in effect, shift my entire day forward by 30 minutes. It turns out that the problem was the existence of a few points in my day that weren’t going anywhere.
Stuff got squeezed.
And there isn’t much left to cut. I don’t watch TV. I do game, but that’s usually one night a week. I do watch rugby when I can, but I’m doing that instead of gaming.
I consider reading to be a part of my job as a writer, so that’s not going anywhere. Neither is the Writing. Neither is this website. I’m under no illusions at all that, when my first book sells, my publisher is going to provide more than token publicity. It’ll all be on my shoulders, so I’d better get used to it now, before I have to get used to it later.
Unfortunately, the day-job isn’t going anywhere either.
I’m not willing to sacrifice the scant down time I get. I’ve got to refill the creative well sometime. Neither am I willing to sacrifice the scant Family time I get.
That leaves sleep. For now at least.
Now bear in mind that I’m not talking about cutting huge swaths of time out of my sleeping schedule (Although yesterday was the exception – Yawn – ). Instead of compressing my day by 30 minutes, I’m expanding it (Yes, at a cost) by 30 minutes to an hour resulting in 7.5-7 hours of sleep.
Not ideal but, over this past week, it’s started to cut the short term stress a little (None of this is instantaneous), and less stress was a definite 2018 goal (as was figuring out how to change lead to gold – which I abandoned…only one impossible thing per year is my quota).
About that cost.
I know from experience that this’ll catch up with me toward the end of the week, so I’ll need to stack the deck in my favor when I can.
I’ve been bringing this work to the day-job and, maybe knock stuff out during my lunch break. Sometimes it works, sometimes I’m so drained that I can only read (ok, so reading is – in fact – taking a minor hit here), sometimes I don’t even get the full break.
You do what you can.
I’ve come to the realization that I say this a lot, “Do what you can.”
Part of it is a reminder to myself to keep at it. Keep slogging forward – and some days it is a slog. Other days it isn’t. And one type of day isn’t more important than the other.
Part of it is (I hope) an encouragement for those of you out there that need it.
I also realize that this segment of the blog has been dark and, possibly, a little complain-ey lately, and I appreciate you sticking it out with me.
This was supposed to be a chronicle of the day-to-day that we hear so little of. To show folks that it isn’t all productivity, and cafes, and wine.
And it certainly hasn’t been lately – though in a way it has.
It’s amazing what you’ll try when you’re struggling – and some of it will even work.
See you on Sunday
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Be sure to stop by on Sunday for the regular blog post.
Be sure, also, the check out the Freebies Page for story Excerpts.
Be safe Y’All.