The title comes from a 5th Dimension song about spring eventually banishing winter and love eventually brightening someone’s life. I quoted it because I’ve been thinking a lot about time this past week or so.
As I’ve blogged about a couple of times, going back to an eight-hour work day has proven successful, more so if I force myself to take regular breaks (I’m bad about that) and to put the computer down at the end of the day. But this week I came to realize that’s been balanced out by my morning schedule going belly up.
Normally I get up, read, pet cats, have breakfast and work for an hour (not in that order). A little after that, TYG comes down with the dogs. If I wake up early, I put in more time. The past couple of weeks, I’ve been more inclined to lie in the bed for a while when I wake up in the middle of the night. That’s understandable but it means I lose time, and inevitably I’m going to take naps later in the day.
The bigger problem is that TYG is putting in more work in the early morning. Typically she lets Trixie come down first, then comes down herself with Plushie, anywhere from 15 minutes to an hour later. That means we do the dog-care stuff later, followed by walkies and then I start the rest of the work day.
Theoretically if we start an hour later I should have an hour of extra work in before we start. Somehow it doesn’t happen, and so I wind up losing anywhere from an hour to 90 minutes of morning time. I think part of it is that this is a relatively new development so I still don’t anticipate the delay. I wind up not jumping back into work after cuddling Trixie because I assume it’s not going to be that long. Oops. Fortunately this is fixable; next week I shall fix it (I did pretty well this morning).
I’ve also noticed I’ve stopped paying attention to my monthly and yearly to do lists. That’s a combination of two factors I suspect. One is that a lot of items on the monthly list stay constant, like the amount I donate to charity every month, buying food for a local food bank, getting exercise daily. Another is that my writing goals are simple at the moment: write my Local Reporter stories, write Jekyll and Hyde, and that’s it. It’ll change when Sam finishes the cover for Southern Discomfort but until then, it’s pretty simple. And I keep a lot of small daily goals (exercise, putting the dogs through their exercises, remembering to apply sunscreen) in my notebook rather than on the computer.
Even before that, though, I’ve been paying less attention. Which is bad because when I’m not in rush-to-finish mode I have multiple projects a month, from actual writing to finding places to submit stories to paying sales tax. I will lose track, trust me. Clearly I need a new process. Whether that’s putting more stuff in the notebook, setting aside time to review the goals or what, I don’t know yet.
That said, how well did I use my time this week? Okay, I guess. I had lunch with a friend, an errand to get doggie drugs and one to get a minor car repair dealt with. Plus I voted.
Once again Local Reporter work sucked up a little too much time. I got one story in — an update on Carrboro’s business loan program — but the multiple other inquiries I sent out got bupkiss results? That meant I spent a good deal of time hunting for an idea for a second story, with no success. Wasted, unprofitable time. Though the inquiries should still pay off down the road.
And I did an interview this afternoon with a 98-year-old woman who’s published a book of reminiscences. She was a hoot — I’ll link to the story when it comes out.
On Jekyll and Hyde, I got every movie slotted into one or the other chapter. That will make rewriting simpler and reduces the chance I missed anything. Some of the chapters will have to be reorganized eventually but it’s a good step forward. I watched more of Dark Shadows‘ parallel world plotline and some episodes of Julia Jekyll and Harriet Hyde, a BBC kids’ comedy from the 1990s. Definitely thought I’d get more done. Once again I didn’t get any Atomic Junkshop posts written.
Oh, and I read a section of the book to my writers’ group. As usual the feedback was excellent.
And so the week ends. As you’ve probably guessed, all the illustrations but Trixie are time-themed. Photos from The Time Machine and Summer Time Machine Blues, comics cover by Curt Swan, paperback cover by Richard Powers. All rights to images remain with current holders.
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