It’s been a BIG quarter for me, more on a personal level than in any other way. Regular readers will know that I’ve been happy recently   and coming out of that black hole has had a big impact on how I think and feel and work in all areas of my life, and it has been a continual improvement since then.

I feel more relaxed, more focussed on what’s important, and I feel I’ve really internalised a lot of thinking I’ve been doing this year – helped by the regular blogging, which has made me realise how circular or perhaps cyclical my state of being has been up to now.

Back in Feb I said (after a particularly crappy week):

So, despite the potential for derailment, I did manage to get a lot done in the week so I feel like it hasn’t been wasted. I guess the BIG learning points for me are:

1) Shit happens, deal with it and move on

2) Plans are not set in stone, I need to be flexible and change things around as and when needed

3) I should acknowledge and value what I have done, instead of dwelling on what I have not done

4) As long as I keep my key words – COMPLETE and ENJOY – as my guiding lights, I’ll stay on track

Point 3 is a huge step for me. I am always far too quick to step up and give myself a kicking over the things I have not done. Based on looking over the list of what I *did* do (and that leaves out all the normal, house-and-family-daily-maintenance activity I handle), I can’t even begin to describe last week as a waste of time or opportunity. I used my time in a slightly different way to how I had planned it. That doesn’t make it (or me) a failure.

However, it’s something I lost sight of, except for brief flashes on an intermittent basis when I was feeling good anyway, up until now when I re-read it, and it actually feels *right*, and I accept that what I wrote then is actually true, and those four points are now an integral part of the way I think about what I do and how I approach each day.

At the end of Q2, I said:

I’ve achieved less than I hoped I would. However, what is undoubtedly a massive benefit that by far outweighs the slower progress is that I feel I am settling into a good routine of working and playing, that I am holding to my two intentional words for the year – COMPLETE and ENJOY – and that I feel I am making good progress.

Not only in my writing and in my business, but in personal terms as well, I feel more settled than I did at the beginning of the year, and whilst my passions for writing and sewing will continue to drive me, I feel less crowded by other demands on my time, and that I am able to pay more attention to the ‘big rocks‘ and as a result I am getting more done.

That, for me, has absolutely been borne out by Q3, despite more changes in routine and different demands on my time – I’m focussing on the priority tasks, and a lot of the smaller, less critical elements are being deferred or deleted - I feel less pressure to DO IT ALL NOW. That’s impossible, and will only cause me stress and anxiety … and because I’ve accepted this, I no longer get the associated resentment and frustration at being so hamstrung by children and routine domesticity: they, too, are a critical part of my life, and are actually more important than a lot of the ’stuff’ on the infernal list.

So: on to the nitty gritty. I’m working to the revised plan as laid down in Quarter 2, and generally I’m up to date with it all – which is a blooming good feeling! I guess it helps that the planning was better, and more realistic, at least in part because I’ve settled into a good working routine and have a better understanding of how I work and how much I can do – consistently, without the big binges and consequent crashes.

1) Writing

Standard tasks:

- maintain schedule discipline of write/edit/submit a story every other week – this has dropped off a little over the quarter – 13 stories in ‘finished inventory’ and a total of 48 submissions. This is kind of on track with the ’submit a story every other week’ target I set, but that feels like a technicality, because I really haven’t been paying much attention to it this year – the focus has been all on novels. I am, however, happy with the level of activity- the level of rejections suggests that I do need to pull back on this, go back and re-review the stories in light of the rejections, and maybe do a little more workshopping etc of the stories. My priorities, however, lie quite firmly in getting the novels finished and edited and out on the rounds, so it’s inevitable that the short stories suffer. I’m going to hold it over until next year, and when I do my planning, I’ll incorporate a round of short storying in between novel activity.

- maintain current crit group commitments  – on track, more or less – I have a week of catch up scheduled for next week!

- complete the “How to Think Sideways” course – this is back on track, though I’m working it slightly differently (and probably how Holly intended in the first place ) – I’m using the course lessons alongside the writing work I’m doing, so that it informs and enhances the work – that way I am properly understanding the material and its application into my writing, and hopefully producing stronger first drafts as a result.

 In terms of outline priorities, the rest of the year looks broadly like this:

• July – HTTS
• September – ‘Contain This Hour’ novella revised-concept first draft

The HTTS rethink meant that these two got ‘bundled’ together, for the writing elements of the course, at least. As a result, CONTAIN THIS HOUR  took a bit longer than I thought it was going to, but I HAVE FINISHED THE FIRST DRAFT!!! Woot! Fantastic news, and I feel very good about it … of course, it does need a lot of rework, but hey, first drafts aren’t supposed to be perfect.

As a result of the HTTS rethink, the Anneth edits got shifted out into October, when they will tie in with the editing parts of the HTTS course. I’m trialling the methods on a (not so) short story I wrote back in Feb, that I’m considering for submission to the Samhain Publishing “Angels and Demons” Anthology call. It is entirely possible that due to the delay in finishing CONTAIN THIS HOUR, that I won’t even get Anneth edits started, since I think getting the Samhain sub out the door takes higher priority, and, of course, Nanowrimo is coming up.

• October – ‘Serpent of Colchis’ edits -

This is *so* booted into next year, not least because I only picked up a single crit in the last round of my novel crit group. I need to take another look at it and the ‘blurb’ that goes alongside it before I put it back into the queue because it (and I!) desperately need help, since everyone who has read ends up  *loathing* my main character.

• November/December/January – ‘Sere’ first draft 

This is still in the pipeline, and Nanowrimo is the launch pad. I am *seriously* excited about this novel, and can hardly wait to get started … and it will take me the rest of this year (factoring in Christmas and other, regular commitments on the writing front) and into next year to complete. It’s a BIG story and it is *BURNING* me up. (Which is *absolutely* how it should be!)

So, all in all, and taking the year into account, it’s been an absolute stormer. No, I haven’t done everything I said I wanted to do at the beginning of the year, but those plans were preposterously optimistic and I am very happy with what has been my biggest writing year so far.

• I have 13 short stories out on regular submission rounds
• I have rewritten (almost from scratch) SERPENT OF COLCHIS – 97K words of it, and taken it through an edit pass.
• I have rewritten – from scratch, since I fundamentally changed the whole premise of the story – DISCONNECTION – 60k words
• I have written two novellas  – STALKER – 21k words, and CONTAIN THIS HOUR – 29k words

I think by any standards, that’s not a bad haul, and when I add in the regular critiquing of short stories, novels and novel chapters AND the HTTS course, that’s not a bad haul of words – and the year’s not done yet!!

Textile arts/crafting – from a business perspective, this is more or less where I want it to be right now. The Etsy experiment is closed off, for now, though I might go back to it at a later date, or perhaps give MISI a try, since it seems more UK based (though with a smaller potential marketplace …). Targets wise, the end of the year is looking pretty packed:

• I’ve set up a separate blog – Magpies Laundry – for the textiling side of things … I need to build up regular posting, and getting more photo-ing going so I can keep that up to date
• At the moment, I’m working up my Christmas stock (yes, I know, already!) – that’ll take up the next week or so before I ship to the gallery
• I’ve got a number of commissions lined up that I’m pretty excited about – once I get my stock cleared, I can crack on with them – should be fun!! That’ll take me into November, easily.
• I need to restructure my website so that it’s more coherent and better represents what I do – it looks a bit scrappy at the moment, and I desperately need to update some of the links AND add more photos onto it.

Existing objectives:

- try 1 new stitch, technique or craft I haven’t tried before each month - this really dropped off this quarter, mostly because it seems pointless to be trying things just for the sake of it. With limited time and regular demand for what I already do, I need to be focussing on delivering what I can do, well. For next year, I might pinpoint a couple of techniques that I *really want* to try out and target them as specific development areas (crochet springs to mind!) or else look at courses and/or mentors who might help me further develop areas I already work in.

- stick to my ‘buy handmade’ pledge I haven’t been buying much of anything, but what  I have bought has been handmade

- stick to my ‘wardrobe refashion’ pledge on track – haven’t bought any new clothes for me or the children this year – NCT sales, charity shops and ebay have kept us kitted out in fine style at next to no cost. It’s all good … and I’ve actually signed up for ‘life’ in the lastest rounds, because I enjoy it so much!

- do at least one of Marysa’s lovely courses at the Otter Bindery - the timings just haven’t worked out for me so far, but I’m retaining the intention …

Personal - not so much here, though with so much going on in the above two, one of them must be:

- REMEMBER I HAVE A FAMILY

- I will take at least 2 weeks holiday this year - Summer felt like one long holiday!! I did do a fair bit of writing, but had decided that with the children off school, trying to keep the textile side going was putting myself on a hiding to nothing, so instead I kicked back and had an absolute ball with the children – with the week at Easter, and the 4 weeks over the summer, I’ve well and truly met this target …

- I will try at least 1 new thing with at least 1 of my children every month At the end of last quarter, I concluded “I haven’t really been doing this, but we have been spending time together, so I think it counts … I’d rather not be doing things just for the sake of novelty …” and that does still hold. Instead, I’ve been concentrating on being less rigid and obsessive with my routine jobs etc, and they’ve enjoyed ‘helping’ me with chores and cooking and gardening – caterpillar picking was a particular favourite!!

- I will work through the “How to talk/how to listen” book – SHAME! I still haven’t opened this book … but by sorting out my routines and being more calm and ‘available’ with/for them, I feel like I’m making progress anyway. Certainly Shrieking Banshee Woman ™ has been making fewer appearances, recently.

- go to bed before midnight at least 4 times a week – I had that sorted at the end of Q2, but it’s slipped rather now the children are back at school and the full workload has kicked in again. I’ve been forced to accept that I need more sleep, I simply don’t have the stamina I had 10, or even 5, years ago – I don’t like it, but I do need to work with it and get some more sleep, and an early night at least once a week – Wednesday is looking favourite, since my dance class eats the evening.

- Books/Reading

- I will read at least 20 books this year, and I will (try to) not buy any more books (excl below) until I’ve caught up my backlog hmmmm. I’m just not very good at ‘not buying books’, although I am using the library more than previously ….

This year, I have read:  

1. Crystal Line – Anne McCaffrey
2. Tortilla Flat – John Steinbeck
3. Perfume – Patrick Suskind
4. Mainspring – Jay Lake
5. Escapement – Jay Lake
6. We Never Talk About my Brother – Peter S Beagle
7. Far Bright Star – Robert Olmstead
8. The Painted Man – Peter V Brett
9. Wolfblade (Wolfblade trilogy) – Jennifer Fallon
10. Warrior (Wolfblade trilogy) – Jennifer Fallon
11. Warlord (Wolfblade trilogy) – Jennifer Fallon
12. The Nameless Day (Crucible trilogy) – Sara Douglass
13. The Wounded Hawk (Crucible trilogy) – Sara Douglass
14. The Crippled Angel (Crucible trilogy) – Sara Douglass
15. Lord of Snow & Shadows (Tears of Artamon Trilogy) – Sarah Ash
16. Prisoner of Ironsea Tower (Tears of Artamon Trilogy) – Sarah Ash
17. Children of the Serpent Gate (Tears of Artamon Trilogy) – Sarah Ash
18. The Trial of Flowers – Jay Lake
19. Over – Margaret Forster
20. Not the End of the World – Kate Atkinson
21. Rise of the Iron Moon – Stephen Hunt
22. Among the Mountains – Wilfred Thesiger
23. On Chesil Beach – Ian McEwan
24. The Player of Games – Iain M Banks
25. Cast a Bright Shadow – Tanith Lee
26. The Bulgari Connection – Fay Weldon. Actually, this one probably doesn’t count seeing as I cast it aside without finishing it …

Next up I have Holly Lisle’s Diplomacy of Wolves, and I *should* be having Peter Brett’s next installment, Desert Spear, but amazon inform me the date has been put back to spring of next year. Grrrr, he’s as annoying as Stephen Donaldson in that respect – I’m still waiting for the final book of the last Covenant novels!!! So, beyond that, I’ve got nothing doing … beyond a handful of textbooks I want to take a run at (in my spare time, ha ha ha!)

I did toy with the idea of writing reviews for the books I read. I think, in the longer term, I’ll retain the intention, with a view to bringing it online as either a secondary income stream and/or source of free books, but for now it’s just not a high enough priority to allocate time to it.

- I will catalogue the existing collection on Library Thing - this still stands at its previous measurement of 8/32 shelves done, with 3 cartons yet to be unpacked. No progress …. I’ve been adding new books as they come through the door, so the backlog ins’t getting any bigger, but I’m figuring this is probably a winter task, and there’s a big dependency on me sorting out the attic-office so that I can actually shelve some of the books currently in cartons on the stairs. I need to set myself a deadline …

- house and garden

- grow more fruit and veg this year than we did last year – stick to the planting and maintenance plan - I kept more or less on track with this, but the weather and associated bug/pest increase has played havoc with my crops. We *did* grow and eat more than we did last year, but we lost an awful lot, as well. Next year’s crops are in progress, seeds are ordered and lessons learned reviewed and incorporated into next year’s gardening plan.

- reduce waste again to 1/2 a bin bag every week The introduction of the new waste scheme has got us down to a couple of small (carrier) bags every 2 weeks, with food waste and recycling collected separately. Having seen the way they collect the recycling – everything squished together into one big lorry – I’m a little sceptical about how much is actually being recycled, and how much is being landfilled by stealth. It’s something I need to follow up …

- take another 5% off our total energy usage for the year - I’ve completely lost track of where we are with this, and need to catch up!!!

- declutter and redecorate loft, improve my workspace – decluttering is done, redecoration is not started – as for the end of Q2, no further progress – I’m targetting it as a winter activity when the garden/weather dictate indoors!

- list and sort out all the little leftover jobs now the refurb is finished - list is done, and in progress, but good weather isn’t conducive to interior work, so it’s slow progress – will probably pick up once the garden season is over …. as of the end of Q2 … progress is picking up, but it’s a slow old business and painting is tricky with an active toddler around …

- and last but not least, get my BMI back down to 22. It’s completely out of control since Bellaboo arrived, and I don’t think I can call it baby fat any more. It’s just fat. It must go. Progress hasn’t been good on this, but I’m now doing 2 dance classes a week, a buggysize class and I have the Wii Fit & Wii Active, that I generally get to either every day or every other day, and things are finally starting to turn around – I’ve gone down one notch on my belt in the past week!! I’ve booked myself onto a health & nutrition course starting in mid October, so hopefully that’ll further the mission. Still horrified that I weigh as much now as I did when I was full-term pregnant with Honey, way back when …

Wow! I have been enormously busy, but life is good and I’m enjoying the fullness of it … I’m hitting the things that are important to me, little by little, and I’m getting less hung up on the bits and pieces I don’t get to – picking the cherries off my ‘menu of desirable options’ is working well for me, and for the first time in a long time, I’m coming into the last quarter of the year feeling positive about what I have done this year, what I’ve still got left to do, and really not feeling the impending sense of dread depressive failure because I haven’t had a ‘perfect’ year and achieved the pie-in-the-sky hopes of the beginning of the year.

Critically, for me, this year has let me establish a good routine in all areas of my life – from childcare and domestic goddessing, to my internal convolutions, to my textile work, to my WRITING (huge win!) AND in the ‘interior refinements’ the house needs.

I’m tired, but in a satisfied way. I bet you are too – I’ve just seen the word count on this, so if you’re still with me, dear reader, then thank you, and good night!

I actually managed to get a good week in, last week, and am feeling remarkably well-balanced and settled at the moment. It’s a relief after feeling so off-centre for what feels like a long time.

All lot of things fell into place for me over the last week, not least of which was a series of affirmations that I wrote out for myself, and a written recognition of techniques and tools that work for me, and a “banned list” of negative ways of acting and thinking that are just not helpful.

It amazed me how much power came out of writing these affirmations down: I felt incredibly liberated and almost tearful with some of them, a release from years of build-up of anxieties and resentments which felt like a huge load got lifted off my shoulders.  And actually, it was a huge load that I lifted off – part of it was an active decision to shuck off the weight of others’ expectations of me – what I should be or do or think or want, and a decision to trust in myself and my own judgement, and make my own choices based on what I *really* want, not what I think others think I ought to want.  (Hrmmm, a bit convoluted, that one, no wonder I’ve been confused).

A big part of that is actively allowing myself to trust that those around me, for whom I care, will uphold me: if I let myself fall, they will catch me. They care enough about me to accept my decisions even if they don’t necessarily like them … and may even *prefer* my decisions and choices knowing that they are made wholly from my needs & desires rather than driven out of some sort of reluctant submission to my speculative assessment of *their* needs & desires. It’s quite scary and exposed-feeling, and I’m feeling vulnerable, like it’s a huge, brave and bold step to take, though I wonder whether or not anyone else will notice … I’m not announcing it with loud fanfares, nor am I being particularly aggressive over protecting my choices. It just feels like a big step out into the light from the black box I’ve been hiding in since … I don’t know when.

 A big side effect of working out these affirmations – these positive, powerful statements – has been that I have felt much more relaxed and confident over the past week in all areas of my life. The transformative power of a simple mindshift to view myself and what I *can* do in positive terms (instead of being trapped by all the negative not/can’t fears) is absolutely astonishing – in stressful situations, I’m much more able to relax and deal with it calmly, objectively and constructively, and am much more prepared to think laterally to consider the problem from a different angle and figure out a way to solve it without insisting that *my* way is the *only* way to approach it.

I’m become much more flexible in terms of using my time – I already used timeblocking, but got upset if I couldn’t use my ‘block’ as I’d planned, and let myself get incredibly pressured by the almighty to-do list. My attitude shift is allowing me to prioritise my most-important tasks each day and let the rest go, and view the to-do list as a semi-prioritised menu of desirable options. It means that I’m much less of a slave to the whip-cracking list, and I’m viewing those things as enjoyable ways to use leisure time to enhance my home or garden or life in general, rather than mandatory exercises to be got through and ticked off in some endless and futile pursuit of an impossible perfection. It helps remind me that these are all things (with a few exceptions) that I *want* to do, and that I will *enjoy* the process of doing, not imposed tasks that I should or ought to do.

I suppose a lot of this sounds pretty obvious, and I guess in many ways it is. But, for me, after the best part of nine years down a black hole kicked off by PND when Honey was born, these are massive steps out of an oppressive, depressive prison of Aspergers, anxiety and misery and back to some sort of normality. Yes, I am different, but those differences are not labels I can hide behind, nor are they plasters that I can use to patch myself back up so I can resemble a ‘normal’ person (whatever one of those might be). People will either accept me or they will not, and knowing I have Aspergers or PND or an anxiety disorder or psoriasis or whatever is not going to change their perceptions of me. They are excuses *I* use to shut myself off, and they do me no good and, in the long run, make it harder for people to understand and ultimately accept me.

I know with the level of creativity and drive I have, and with the standards I set myself, AND with a home and 3 children to nurture, my life is going to be busy. Very busy. But I can accept that, just as I can accept that I might need to let things happen more slowly so that I can maintain my wellbeing and energy levels in their current state. I am choosing to live that way, and by recognising my own active choices I rid myself of any number of nasty little resentment demons and I feel more open and at peace with myself and with my surroundings.

Of course, it’s not all perfect. I have had moments of stress and backsliding into old ways – after all, bad, entrenched habits are pretty hard to break all in one go – but these feel like exceptions rather than the norm. And I know that it’s easy to get carried away on the first wave of enthusiasm with these sorts of changes.

However, these changes feel like they go deep, like they’re a big, seismic shift in the way I think of myself, and in the way I see my life and those who fill it. I think it’s going to take some time for all those changes to settle down, for the aftershocks and knock-on effects to fully subside and for me to get used to this new internal landscape.

It’s exciting, not least because I’ve just given myself the most comfortable and productive week I’ve had in a very long time. In the last week I wrote another six scenes of the problematical CONTAIN THIS HOUR, so now I have 3/8 stories finished, and only 1 more story in the first cycle to finish, but I’ve also been keeping on top of the domestic and business side of things, AND finding time to spend on myself - with relaxations and exercise and gardening. With instant and immediate results like that, it’s easy to want to keep these changes going.

I iz happy.

YAY!

We had our first full week back at school, and I can’t believe how fast it shot past.

It’s been a tough week for us all. After the comedown of last weekend’s excitement, it’s been all about getting our heads down and re-establishing routines and, for me, starting to tackle the holiday backlog of projects and deferred housekeeping – in the house, the garden, in my writing and in my business.

In a way, it’s a huge relief to move away from the unstructured chaos of the holidays and back into something approaching regularity – we’re not quite there yet, but we’re pretty close.  In others, the expectation that I/we would just drop straight back into it and hit the ground running was unrealistic.

For one thing, Bellaboo has decided she no longer needs her post-lunch nap, so trying to adapt my business working routines is going to be tricky: losing that two hours of uninterrupted time is going to be hard to replace. I think, in theory, that I should be able to get most of it done with her around, but it’s frustrating because it’ll mean that everything takes that bit longer because my concentration can’t be as focussed as it otherwise would be.

I also didn’t anticipate how much the switch back to a ‘working’ routine would drain me – and the children – and that a certain amount of ‘easing back into it’ is in order. Thankfully, the school didn’t load them up with homework, so despite protests about it all being hard work (it is), I think we’ll be back into the swing of it.

The big disappointment, for me, has been that my writing has been slipping. I’d hoped (again) to write six scenes for the CONTAIN THIS HOUR series, but in between exhaustion, unanticipated parental visits, dance class and a night of insomniac infantness, I’ve only got three done.

Possibly, I wouldn’t have even got that, because my lack of any sort of real progress on these stories had started to build itself up into a massive, monolithic monster of self-fulfilling failure, and I was finding myself starting to look for excuses why I shouldn’t write it, that I needed to make some massive changes to the basic premises of the story, that I didn’t have the skills to tackle it YET, that I should shelve it and move on.

But being the persistent devil that I am, in a non-quitting sort of way, I wasn’t prepared to give it up without a fight.

It turns out that a simple routine switch did the trick – I decided to have a shot at writing in the morning, and shifting my textile work to the evening … and it worked very and extremely well. I guess not being tired was a major factor, but I also think that just putting myself into that mental state of “I am going to sit down here and for the next hour I am going to do nothing else but work on this story” was enough to jolt it loose, because I’ve successfully worked on it in the evenings since then. Textiling, I can do when Bella is awake. Writing novels? Not a chance, so the loss of that nap means I can’t make the routine switch permanent. Perhaps, when she goes to pre-school NEXT September, I’ll experiment with the switch again and see how it goes, although, of course, phonecalls &etc can only happen during business hours, so we’ll have to see how that goes.

What is a big (re-)learning point for me is that I do need to re-establish working without distractions. The first part resurfaced quite quickly – that I need to plug headphones in and listen to music appropriate to the genre/period/style in which I’m writing. This week, LastFM has saved me, and I’m actually getting quite into big band music. The second remembered habit came out of the daytime writing session - emails, forums and blogs need to wait until AFTER the daily writing goals have been achieved, and whilst I’m working on them, I must stay disconnected from all distractions.

It has amazed me how easily all those hard-won learning points from earlier THIS year fell away over the slack, pressure-free days of the holidays and how it has taken so much effort to bring them all back on-line so I can get back to productive work. I suppose I need to be grateful that I *am* remembering my effective habits and gradually slipping off the ones that hold me back, but it’s made me feel like my writerly mojo is something that does need to be trained, and kept in good condition, just as an athlete trains their body, to be able to perform well. And, without that regular training, it’s become flabby and less strong, and what was simple is now painful and tiring.

What I’m hoping is that I haven’t lost too much condition, and that I can ramp back up to peak performance pretty quickly: on the plan, I need to have CTH finished by the end of September. Given that it’s projected at 8 stories of 3-5k each, then I think it’s going to be feasible to work 2-3 a week so I should, should, just about squeak in, given a clean run at the rest of the month.

Fingers crossed, eh?

We’ve had an absolute beauty of a holiday, and I’m slowly easing myself back into something approaching a routine with my work and writing.

Wish you were here?

A part of me still is, I think – certainly I’m still moving on slow-time and feel disinclined to re-engage with the dull, mundane doings of everyday life. I’d much rather be sitting on the beach ….

Of course, now I’m back, I feel like I ought to be piling back into the work, but the holiday rhythms persist and I find myself struggling to do without a mid-afternoon siesta. I strongly suspect that if it was just me and Bellaboo, and the others were back at school, then I would be taking a little siesta whilst she napped in the afternoon – I slipped into the routine so easily, and adapted so quickly to that burst of morning activity, the lazy lunch and long rest afterwards, then another burst of activity, longer this time, in the evenings – it feels like a very natural rhythm by which to live. I’m looking at ways I can try to bring some of that into my life on an ongoing basis, whether by meditation or relaxation or a quick yoga session or something in the middle of the day that will induce that sense of pause and rest – given that I’m not sure a nap is feasible.

It felt good to have the pressure off for a while – even though I took some writing work with me, I didn’t feel compelled to sit at it – I picked it up and set it down as I pleased. I was surprised how well I managed without my routines – being able to live in the moment has never been one of my strong points, but somehow having so much less and being in a different situation completely removed the ordinary pressures and stresses of my daily slog – to the extent that I felt there was a valuable learning for me in the idea that having so much *less* than normal actually gave me more freedom and removed so much of the must/ought pressure of the ‘to-do’ list that rides my back here so often.

It’s a reinforcement of what I’d been feeling for a while in the early summer, and had somehow lost in the fatigue and flurry of the last few weeks of term: that the (domestic) to-do list has to go, and instead what I need to do is view most of the things on it as optional activities that I can choose to spend my (free) time in doing, that possess value only in the utility or satisfaction that they give to me, and not in the expectation of recognition or reward.

Of course, it’s easy to make such space at the moment, outside of the frenetic term-time, but feeling less driven and less harried is something that I’m hoping I can carry on even after the children go back to school, and that I can build on to resist the gradual, toxic buildup of stress by allowing me to see clearly what is important, and what is not, and help me to keep my priorities straight.

But, for the meantime, it’s still the holidays for the children and we’re away again next week.

And so, for this week, I’m just keeping things ticking over, continuing the recharging process and trying to build new habits in terms of managing tasks and my own expectations of myself.

After all, I’ve got plenty of time.

Imagining is like feeling around

in a dark lane, or washing

your eyes with blood.

You are the truth

from foot to brow. Now,

what else would you like to know?

(Rumi, Birdsong)

Coming off the back of last week and a bit of reflection on the year to date, I feel like I’m getting into a good rhythm of activity, and feeling like I have a fantastic balance in my life between family, work and play – of course, it helps that for me the two ‘work’ elements pretty much *are* play.

Balance Beam, Sheilaz413 (Flickr Creative Commons)

Of course, my balance is not perfect. I have wobbles, days when I can’t even find my own centre of gravity, let alone balance anyone else’s needs with my own, and I have great days, when I just float with practised ease through a sequence of apparently physically impossible manoevres to get from the beginning to the end of the day. There are days when I’m too tired to remember, or want to remember, what I’m supposed to do, when I’m stupid and sluggish, and there are days when the behaviour of others pushes me to the limits of what I can tolerate, leaving me physically exhausted and emotionally and mentally drained.

But, on the whole, I am getting closer to a balanced life, when each part is coming together and I feel that I am living a complete existence.

There are three factors at work here.

The first is understanding and acknowledging what’s important to me, the ‘headline’ items that I can’t do without. For me, those things are family, writing, textile arts, home, and garden. Defining this list has allowed me to disconnect from any activity that doesn’t come under one of those headings, and that has freed up huge amounts of time and energy.

The second part came when I moved away from writing lists to ‘time-blocking’. Instead of having an enormous, overwhelming to-do list, I block times of day for certain activities. To give an example: I get home from the school run at approximately 9 a.m. every day, so I spend an hour on general housework and ‘daily’ chores, but instead of having a list or rota or routine or whatever, I will do a quick ‘tour’ of the house and just decide what to do based on what needs doing most. What doesn’t get done in the time available, doesn’t get done – it might get done tomorrow, if it’s higher priority than the other things that need doing. 

And this is where the third element comes in.

Being in touch with my creativity, allowing myself the time and space to express myself, is something that runs through everything I do, and is so closely connected with the ‘enjoy’ element of the intention I set myself at the beginning of the year.

It’s taken me a while to understand how closely the two are connected, and how creativity comes into play to generate enjoyment even in the most tedious of housework tasks. But viewing my life in terms of constant creativity, and trying to make sure that everything I do is driven out of that creativity, has transformed the way I see a lot of things. I read somewhere that artists are the only people in society who are permitted to not grow up, who are allowed to carry on playing way past the time when everyone else has gone out and got a sensible haircut and a safe job, as if we are the guardians of the dreams everyone else has had to set aside. To see my life in terms of a privilege granted, in terms of something that is worthwhile both for my own sake and for others, has let me approach what I do much more lightly, with more sense of play about it.

Because, for me, creativity is so closely allied to the sensual side of life, the transformation of a room from a messy, dirty, cluttered space into an ordered, sensually appealing space is an act of creativity, and I am able to focus on the pleasure I get from a completed chore whilst I am doing it, and at the same time see the chore itself as a worthwhile act that feeds my own sense of wellbeing, and that of my family. Gardening is a creative pleasure, because there not only is the anticipation of the taste of the food, but there is also the visual appeal of a well-planned garden and the fragrances and textures of the different plants that combine to make a coherent whole.

In other areas of life, my creativity lies closer to the surface, but it is interesting for me to start seeing how it feeds off itself.

For example:

At the moment, I am in a ‘learning’ phase with my writing. I’m working on Holly Lisle’s ‘Survival School for Writers‘ and I’ve just come off the back of a month or so of administration, editing, short story submissions and critique group work – all these things are good and necessary, but they are not the same as writing – the actual process of sitting down and letting a story flood out onto the page. At the same time, I’m experiencing huge levels of doubt and insecurity about my writing, because of course the higher level of submissions and critiquing activity is leading to more criticism and rejection: whilst I can’t shake my belief that my *writing* is strong, it does all make me doubt my ability as a *storyteller*, but that’s not for discussion here.

What I have found is that, at the moment, I’m generating fewer story ideas than I would normally, but both the ideas and productivity in my textile arts are off the scale. The number and quality of ideas I’m getting is astonishing, and I’m almost resenting having to do paid work for others because it’s interfering with my desire to get on with the work I want to do for *me*.

I figure, in a pretty simplistic way, that my creativity runs at a pretty constant level, though perhaps slowly and steadily increasing the more I use it. What I figure as an extension from that thought is that because it’s not being channelled into writing, it’s diverting itself into textile projects and busying itself over there. This is a good thing – the last few weeks have generated some fantastic refashions and stock items, and some wonderful ideas for bigger projects that I want to try, as soon as I get a space in between commissions .

When I think back, and compare textile art idea generation currently against that in a period when I was heavily involved in a novel first draft, I can see that there’s a corresponding curtailment (I keep a separate diary/sketchbook for my textile work, everything that goes in there gets dated) in the volume and quality of ideas and desire that is generated for new textile experiments.

I’m quite taken with the idea that the apparently unrelenting rush of ideas swirling around me does have its own rhythm and balance, too.

What’s useful for me is to see that the creativity I bring into my writing and the creativity that drives my textile arts are not two separate elements that I draw on as and when needed, but part of the same whole, and that acknowledgement has been like fitting a couple of jigsaw puzzle pieces together and suddenly seeing them fuse together to make a single, complete, picture.

Seeing beyond that to how I can allow creativity into the other areas of my life and let them get absorbed into that same complete whole is something I get in flashes, like a puzzle piece I know fits somewhere here, but can’t quite join on yet. It will come, but it will take more time and more patience and more testing until I get there.

I am optimistic, though, that I *will* get there.

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,
Half sunk, a shatter’d visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamp’d on these lifeless things,
The hand that mock’d them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
“My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!”
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

Fallen Giant by Duncanh1 (Flickr)

I’m starting the report in reflective mood: perhaps a little negative, but with a clearer picture of both my capacity and desire for work than I had at the beginning of the year. It’s been an odd year – a lot has happened, and with Bellaboo growing out of her ‘baby’ phase into a delightfully cute toddler, balances have shifted around to the extent that I feel I have much more time that I can *choose* how to use, rather than being tied to the intense dependencies of the baby.

I anticipated that this change would happen, but what I didn’t anticipate was the level of demands that arise just on the day-to-day that eat up my time, nor that I would encounter a set of personal issues that have put me back in counselling therapy.

As a result, I’ve achieved less than I hoped I would. However, what is undoubtedly a massive benefit that by far outweighs the slower progress is that I feel I am settling into a good routine of working and playing, that I am holding to my two intentional words for the year – COMPLETE and ENJOY – and that I feel I am making good progress.

Not only in my writing and in my business, but in personal terms as well, I feel more settled than I did at the beginning of the year, and whilst my passions for writing and sewing will continue to drive me, I feel less crowded by other demands on my time, and that I am able to pay more attention to the ‘big rocks‘ and as a result I am getting more done.

It seems counter-intuitive to do less to do more, but actually I’m doing less of the stuff that really doesn’t matter – the sand, if you like, and so I have more time to work on the big, important stuff. Half the battle has been seeing my way clearly through all the attention grabbing clutter – mental and physical – that fills my life, as I guess it does for most people, and by disconnecting myself from those distractions, I’ve set myself free.

It’s an exhilarating feeling, and I just hope that I can keep it up. I just have to keep reminding myself that I am incredibly lucky: I get to spend my days doing the things I love the best, and with the people that mean the most to me. It really doesn’t get much better than that.

And so, to the meat of it …

1) Writing

Standard tasks:

- maintain schedule discipline of write/edit/submit a story every other week – I have a total of 12 stories in ‘finished’ inventory, and have clocked up 43 submissions this year. Sadly, no acceptances, but I keep the faith that they will come.

- maintain current crit group commitments - on track

- complete the “How to Think Sideways” course - I’ve fallen behind on this, but I’m planning out the next month to catch it up

 Anneth: I had hoped to have this out on the submission rounds by now, but a round of critiques has highlighted that I still need to make some changes, so it’s pencilled in for another rework in August, and then out on the submission rounds in Q4. It’s a bit frustrating, but I think worth the effort to polish it up to its very best before I send it out.

 Serpent of Colchis: edit completed in Q1 as planned, it’s now in the hands of my ‘Novel Club’ critique group over at FM Writers. I’m bracing myself …. whatever the comeback, the edits won’t get worked through until late Q4 this year, possibly even early next year, depending on how everything else goes – if I don’t get to it before Nanowrimo comes along, it won’t get touched until after the ‘Sere’ project is finished in first draft.

 Disconnection – the planned rewrite was completed at the beginning of May, so obviously the edits haven’t been started yet. Those now look like they’re dropping to the end of the first quarter of 2010.

Contain This Hour – this one is coming online. I’m spending the next few weeks catching up the HTTS course, and then I’m working on the Anneth edits, and thenI’ll be writing the revised-concept first draft of this novel. I have nothing scheduled yet for the edits: I’m going to wait until I’ve finished it, and then prioritise it into the list.

The list I generated back at the beginning of the year is pretty much out of the window at this stage – I know I’m not going to do half of what I hoped, but equally I’m not beating myself up about it. I’ll continue to schedule things along a timeline, because if I don’t set myself deadlines then I know I won’t perform: however, I’m considering them more as guidelines and not beating myself up about missing out on them – planning is an iterative process, after all .

In terms of outline priorities, the rest of the year looks broadly like this:

• July – HTTS
• August – Anneth edits
• September – ‘Contain This Hour’ novella revised-concept first draft
• October – ‘Serpent of Colchis’ edits
• November/December/January – ‘Sere’ first draft
• February – ‘Disconnection’ edits
• March - ‘Lest Ye Be Judged’ edits
• April – month off!
• May – Storyteller of Akal rewrite
• June – Sere edits
• July – Contain This Hour edits
• August – month off!
• September – writing – new novel idea codename Ziggy Stardust
• October – Storyteller of Akal edits
• November – new novel idea, based on expanding short story

Textile arts/crafting – from a business perspective, this is more or less where I want it to be right now, though I have branched out to an Etsy shop this year. There are a couple of objectives I want to state, though they feel a little nebulous at this stage.

- try 1 new stitch, technique or craft I haven’t tried before each month - done

- stick to my ‘buy handmade’ pledge I haven’t been buying much of anything, but what  I have bought has been handmade

- stick to my ‘wardrobe refashion’ pledge on track – haven’t bought any new clothes for me or the children this year – NCT sales, charity shops and ebay have kept us kitted out in fine style at next to no cost. It’s all good.

- do at least one of Marysa’s lovely courses at the Otter Bindery - the timings just haven’t worked out for me so far, but I’m retaining the intention …

For next year (2010), I’m thinking that with Bellaboo starting pre-school, I’ll have more time on my hands, so I’m going to gear up for doing a couple of craft fairs, and will also get myself organised and apply for full membership of both the Embroidery Guild and the Surrey Guild of Craftsmen.

This is pretty much on track. I’m withdrawing from Etsy for now, simply because I don’t have the time to market myself effectively there, so it’s a waste of time and money when I’m drawing sufficient business from the galleries. I’ve spent a bit more time and attention on smaller, ’stock’ items to try and draw people in – I’m not sure it’s working, but I’m certainly drawing a fairly steady stream of low-level income to supplement the commissions, so I’m happy that sort of activity is more beneficial than the Etsy adventure.

Personal - not so much here, though with so much going on in the above two, one of them must be:

- REMEMBER I HAVE A FAMILY

- I will take at least 2 weeks holiday this year - I’ve already taken 1 week off over Easter, and enjoyed it, and we’ve got 4 weeks of holiday booked over the summer, one way or another. I will do my best not to work at *anything* on these (1 of them is camping, which pretty much precludes writing and sewing, so I’ll be forced to meet my pledge like it or not ).

- I will try at least 1 new thing with at least 1 of my children every month I haven’t really been doing this, but we have been spending time together, so I think it counts … I’d rather not be doing things just for the sake of novelty …

- I will work through the “How to talk/how to listen” book – SHAME! I still haven’t opened this book …

- go to bed before midnight at least 4 times a week – I’ve got that nailed now, I’ve been forced to accept that I need more sleep, I simply don’t have the stamina I had 10, or even 5, years ago.

- Books/Reading

- I will read at least 20 books this year, and I will (try to) not buy any more books (excl below) until I’ve caught up my backlog hmmmm. I’m just not very good at ‘not buying books’, although I am using the library more than previously ….

This year, I have read:

1.  
   1.  
      1. Crystal Line – Anne McCaffrey
      2. Tortilla Flat – John Steinbeck
      3. Perfume – Patrick Suskind
      4. Mainspring – Jay Lake
      5. Escapement – Jay Lake
      6. We Never Talk About my Brother – Peter S Beagle
      7. Far Bright Star – Robert Olmstead
      8. The Painted Man – Peter V Brett
      9. Wolfblade (Wolfblade trilogy) – Jennifer Fallon
      10. Warrior (Wolfblade trilogy) – Jennifer Fallon
      11. Warlord (Wolfblade trilogy) – Jennifer Fallon
      12. The Nameless Day (Crucible trilogy) – Sara Douglass
      13. The Wounded Hawk (Crucible trilogy) – Sara Douglass
      14. The Crippled Angel (Crucible trilogy) – Sara Douglass

Given that I’ve got another trilogy waiting for me to start in on it (The Tears of Artamon, Sarah Ash), Jay Lake’s Trial of Flowers, Margaret Forster ‘Over’, Kate Atkinson ‘Not the End of the World’ & Stephen Hunt’s ‘Rise of the Iron Moon’ sitting in my tbr pile (and a lot of holiday coming up, apparently ), I think I’m going to trounce this target!! I’m wondering whether I should write reviews of all the books I read as well …. I think it would be worth the extra time, no?

- I will catalogue the existing collection on Library Thing - this still stands at its previous measurement of 8/32 shelves done, with 3 cartons yet to be unpacked. No progress ….

- house and garden

- grow more fruit and veg this year than we did last year – stick to the planting and maintenance plan - on track, though the weeding is killing me, and a good downpour to save me watering & refill the water butts would be appreciated ….

- reduce waste again to 1/2 a bin bag every week - on track, and the council’s decision to introduce wheelie bins in September and food caddies will pretty much take us down to nothing – what we do have will, sadly, be the few bits of packaging we can’t recycle.

- take another 5% off our total energy usage for the year - so far, we’ve only cut it by 2%, but of course over the summer we use everything much less, so I’m hoping we can catch up on the target …

- declutter and redecorate loft, improve my workspace – decluttering is done, redecoration is not started

- list and sort out all the little leftover jobs now the refurb is finished - list is done, and in progress, but good weather isn’t conducive to interior work, so it’s slow progress – will probably pick up once the garden season is over ….

- and last but not least, get my BMI back down to 22. It’s completely out of control since Bellaboo arrived, and I don’t think I can call it baby fat any more. It’s just fat. It must go. GAH! Nothing doing here, although I have got exercise back into my life recently – combination of WiiFit and a weekly dance class – I’ll be starting another 2 dance classes in September, and I need to get some strength training into my routine as well. But BMI is refusing to move … I’m hoping that as I clear mental clutter, I’ll start being able to shift the barriers stopping me giving this the priority it needs.

All in all, it’s been a tough but generally productive quarter – I feel decluttered and positive and ready to move forward, so I’m hoping that the momentum will keep going even over the slower pace the summer holidays will necessarily dictate.

What is this life, if, full of care

There is no time to stand and stare

No time to stand beneath the boughs

And stare as long as sheep or cows

No time to see, when woods we pass

Where squirrels hide their nuts in grass

No time to see, in broad daylight

Streams full of stars like skies at night

No time to turn at Beauty’s glance

And watch her feet. how they can dance

No time to wait til her mouth can

Enrich the smile her eyes began

A poor life this, if, full of care

We have no time to stand and stare.

(W H Davies)

I have been stalled, badly, to the extent that I’m barely scratching the surface of the things I want to get done, for some weeks now. In fact, ever since we had the half-term holiday & I was forced to take a break. Ever since, I’ve been struggling to pick myself back up and get off that break and back down to serious work. There are a number of reasons why. Having that time off gave me a little pause: it lifted away the weight of the daily grind – the damn schedule, the to-do list – that demands my time and attention more than any of the children, always nagging away with that must-do sequence of jobs – housework, kidstuff, Magpies, writing, and gave me a taste of freedom.

Lazy Day on the Beach by Ohnasch.de (Flickr creative commons)

When I came home, the weight of it all settling back onto my shoulders was almost unbearable.

And the list stretches an eternity before me, never-ending, an infinite toil without thanks or hope of completion. Suddenly, having had the time to look up at the view, to see what was around me right now and to spend some time in the moment to just ’stand and stare’, has made me feel what dull drudgery I wallowed in before.

I felt defeated, overwhelmed and demotivated. I’m never going to finish that list, so why even bother starting?

And this is where a little past form comes into play: a life littered with half-completed projects, and I’ve sworn over and over again that I will either complete or close the lot of them. A further factor: my ‘Belbin’ profile.

Allow, if you will, a brief digression whilst I explain myself. Belbin is a management theorist who defined, in context of organisations, an assessment that gives insights into an individual’s behaviour in a team environment, based on the expression of traits for the various team roles. These traits are, to a degree, flexible in that most individuals will fit more than one of the 9 team roles, and that their traits will vary depending on the make-up of the team in which they find themselves. A more complete explanation of the “Team Inventory can be found over at Wikipedia.

In my corporate days, I went through several of these assessments (always a favourite on ‘team building’ exercises ), and I almost invariably came out strongest on three roles: my primary role was that of  ‘plant’ – the creative, uncommunicative, off-the-wall free-thinking problem solver (funny that), with secondary roles as the Implementer (as the name implies, the one who puts their head down, gets the job done & delivers the goods) and the Completer-Finisher – the picky perfectionist who insists it’s all done right.

When it comes to getting things done, these three are powerful traits that continue to do me great service.

Where they undermine me is in my core thinking. That damn Plant generates ideas like a little dynamo, always spinning new projects, solutions to old problems, better ways of doing/being/working. Trouble is, the Implementer gets hold of them before they’ve been through any sort of feasibility or practicability assessment and just wants to get at them, and then the Completer-Finisher gets totally frustrated that it can’t all be done in the available time and throws all the toys out of the pram, and I’m left exhausted and feeling like a total failure because I haven’t met the impossibly high standards I’ve set for myself.

So there’s the rub.

I’ve been wallowing – unable to get moving, paralysed by the weight of the almighty list in every area, and with little energy to move or change things.

Until last week, when I read Christine Kane’s blog, and, more importantly, her post “Are you leaking?”.

It made me realise that my mind was as cluttered up with ideas and projects as an attic-full of old boxes, and that the amount of energy they were draining off me was crippling me. I need to sort them out, and discard those I won’t ever use again. I realised that when faced with seems like a sisphyean task, I’ll divert my force around the immovable object and start frittering away my time on whatever time-sinks come to hand, so that I don’t have the time to even start the big project.

It also made me realise, obliquely, that it’s not neccessary to delay starting something because I can’t finish it in its entirety in the immediate timeslot available. It is possible to break these big tasks down into smaller, incremental chunks, and to accomplish those in series, over a period of time, will get me there as surely as trying to slog it through from start to finish and paying the price in exhaustion and loss of love in the project.

I’d been so focussed on completing the tasks, that I’d forgotten about enjoying myself.

I’d forgotten that these things on the list are the things I *want* to do, that they are things I *enjoy* doings, and that they are more important to me than all the daft (but fun) ways of wasting time I’ve been indulging myself in so that I don’t have to face up to those realisations.

So I’ve started making some changes.

I know it won’t be easy, and I know I won’t get it instantly right, but I know that it will be worth doing.

I’ll continue to disconnect from all those distractions, to avoid the time-sinks that eat up my minutes and leave me with nothing. And I’m going to carry on attacking the energy drains.

A simple thing I’ve done this week: if I notice a job needs doing, if it takes less than 5 minutes, I do it there and then. I have set times for certain tasks, and outside of those times I simply don’t do them. If they’re that important, I’ll do them in their slot when that next comes around – e.g. housework – but they get prioritised against the other housework tasks that need doing. And I’m building breaks into my day – two periods where I stop working and play with the children, allow myself to have a little fun.

We’re all doing well on it.

I’m feeling more energised and less stressed, and not having a to-do list hanging over my head is making life much, much easier. For the ‘work’ areas – writing and textiles – I have lists, but they’re worked out and prioritised. What I’ve done is to remove the timetables – as far as possible (textile commissions always come with deadlines ) – and just allow myself to take as long as it needs to take to get the job done. And of course the children are enjoying getting to spend more time with a less-stressed parent …

My Implementer isn’t totally happy about the lack of schedule, and my Aspie-self is more than a little uncomfortable with the new routines, but overall, I feel like the weight of tasks has lifted and I’m much, much happier.

Finally, I feel like I’ve got some breathing space.

What is really, really strange – and something I haven’t quite figured out yet – is that by consciously deciding to do LESS, I’m actually achieving more.

I’m a little late with this week’s blog post, and it’s because last week I was forced to admit that I am human, and that I can’t carry on with the insane hours and schedule that I’d been trying to maintain.

I need to step back and take things a little easier on myself.

This all came about, I suppose, because I signed up for the newsletter over at Alex Fayle’s Someday Syndrome and received ‘84 tips to avoid procrastination’. Now, I don’t know if Alex works some kind of weird voodoo, or if my subconscious is trying to tell me something (OK, I’ll admit the latter is more likely ), but all the random tips I’ve pulled out in the last week have had huge, meteor-like impacts on my life and forced me to step back and reassess what it is that I’m doing, and what’s important to me.

It’s difficult to step back when you’re on the edge.

There’s been a certain amount of emotional freefall, and it’s all been very draining, and I keep coming back to the realisation that my inability to communicate is at the root of a lot of my frustrations with life, relationships and myself, and that I need to do something to defuse all the pent-up anger building up inside me before it gets truly toxic. When I get into phases like this, I don’t help myself by retreating into the cave of my skull and isolating myself physically and emotionally from the world in general, and more particularly from everyone surrounding me. Effectively, I turn my glass wall into concrete and become just about as accessible as if I really was inside a bunker.

Which, of course, doesn’t help either me or anyone else.

Things all came to a head on Friday evening: my thought for the day had been “sometimes, no matter how hard you try to make something happen, your body/brain just won’t do it.” And on Friday night, my physical isolation and emotional shutdown – a kind of self-imposed internal exile – translated itself into a physical reality, an almost total shutdown - I crashed. I got Bellaboo to bed, went to my room to fetch a cardigan because I felt cold, sat down on the bed for a moment and woke up two hours later.

I have never felt so exhausted in my entire life. An exhaustion that went bone-deep, aching in every joint, with no energy, blacker and bleaker than the deepest depression hole I’ve ever fallen into, and that took everything I had out and left me with nothing.

It’s taken me four days of taking everything *very* easy to get back to any semblance of normality, and even now I’m living a very pared down existence, focussing only on the most important tasks and working literally day-to-day. I have to thank Goddess Leonie’s Zen Habits poster for that, certainly in terms of disconnecting from distractions and getting back to basics.

I’m gradually starting to bring things back online, but slowly and carefully, with very careful planning of each day, down to breaking it all into half-hourly chunks of tasks and rest and play and monitoring their effect on me. So far it’s going OK, but I’m having to resist the urge to push myself at every turn. Tonight was my first night back at writing, and I restricted myself to a single scene on Disconnection. It went well, but I stopped and cut off the desire to keep working at it. I’ll work the next scene tomorrow, and then 1 scene a night until it’s done, and I’m hoping I can sustain that pace, fingers crossed.

The period of recovery and reflection and readjustment of routine has highlighted a couple of important areas that I need to address:

1. My inability to communicate, not just with general people, but with people in my key relationships, is not something I can ignore any more. It’s starting to have a major impact on my life, and though I’ve talked about it and acknowledged it a while ago (here), I haven’t done anything about it. Now I need to take action, so I’ve referred myself back for counselling because this is not something I can do on my own. (And recognising that is an enormous step forward, for me).
2. I need to understand why I feel so driven, that I set myself these massive targets, and why I have such monstrous lists of writing and textile projects I want to do. What is the rush? Why do I need to charge through it all? What do I need to change so that the process and the learning in each task is something to be enjoyed and savoured rather than hurdles to be passed as quick as possible in a mad dash to – where? what? I know what’s important to me, I know where I want to go. It took me 10 years to build a career in the Finance profession. Should I be surprised that it takes any less time to do the same in other fields? Will taking my time over what I commit to do save me time in the longer run in terms of both lessons properly learnt AND less need for reworks? I think and hope so, but to make this change is a big shift of perspective and outlook for me, and not something I can make happen overnight. If I can understand what need is driving me, then perhaps I can change it. A slower life might be more satisfying, instead of always feeling under the cosh of time.

There are limits to what I can do, and I have to recognise that and adjust my plans and expectations accordingly, otherwise I fear that longer-term health issues will force me to make that adjustment whether I like it or not.

What happened on Friday was a warning.

I think I need to listen to it.

Progress update for end of Q1 2009 . . .

I think it’s overall been a pretty productive one, although as always I find it difficult to recognise my own achievements and focus on where I’m ‘failing’, even though I *always* think I’m going to get more done in a day than I ever do! Still, I’m happy with the quality of the *work* that I’ve been doing, even if progress is slower than I’d hoped.  Time always seems to be my enemy – there’s always more I want to do than I ever have time to accomplish, and the constant juggling gets a bit wearing from time-to-time, and it’s difficult to accept that if I’ve had a good week with the children, then the house looks like a bombsite, but to keep the house clean means neglecting the children …. hello, no-win situation!! The problem is that I end up killing the time I’d use to look after myself – my down time when I’m not parenting, huswiffing or working – in order to keep up with these ‘tasks’, and so it’s the very personal diet and exercise elements that are falling off the radar, as are the handful of self-development targets I’d set myself. I can’t get to them without compromising on the ‘bigger blocks’ of the tasks. I know that rather than bemoaning a lack of time, I should re-prioritise the other things I do, but I’m kind of stuck in a rut with everything, where it’s too difficult (or I don’t have time ) to step outside myself to see what I *need* to do vs what I *want* to do, and prioritising accordingly.

Is there anything I could live with doing less of? The one thing that springs to mind is housework …. it’s something I keep coming back to – can I afford a cleaner to tackle the big cleaning jobs? Do I want a “stranger” in my house? How much time would that really save me? I can’t cut back on the time I spend with the children – until Bellaboo goes to school, anyhoo, nor do I want to cut back on writing time, or the time I spend on Magpies. That leaves precious little else to compromise on. I’m not sure where that leaves me.

One thing this last quarter has taught me, and that I’m facing reluctantly, is that I am getting older, and that I don’t have the stamina I once had. I’ve faced a string of injuries – from a badly torn trapezoid through carpal tunnel, twisted back and swollen knees – and a sequence of stupid coughs, colds, headaches and other minor upsets, all of which tell me that my body can’t meet the demands I’m placing on it any more. Which means that to do more, I need to urgently address issues of health and wellbeing – diet, exercise, and sleep. My hope is that by making myself focus on those areas in the next quarter, by eating right, sleeping well and exercising regularly, I will actually find I have the energy, concentration and focus to better meet the targets I’m setting myself elsewhere, and keep up with the delightful mix of different and interesting activitie s on which I spend my life.

1) Writing  Work list/schedule:

Standard tasks:

- maintain schedule discipline of write/edit/submit a story every other week

In 13 weeks I have written 1 not-so-short story (21k!), edited 3 in detail, and submitted 10 times. Some of those submissions are re-subs of rejected stories. I feel odd about realising that I’m actually on top of the schedule, in so far as I’m sticking to the average of 1 submission every other week, because I’m not writing anything new, nor am I working the backlog. In reality, I haven’t been dropping out of the ‘big’ projects I’ve been working on to hit the short stories, I’ve been rounding up once I’ve finished a project. I think that’s still OK, because I’m averaging around a month on each of the projects, so to slot in a two-week interlude for short-storying etc in between each project is working well for me. Going forward, I think I’m going to make it a target to *add* one new story to the inventory (whether written from scratch or reworked from back-catalogue) each time I do a pass through. This month, it’s ‘In Skin’ which hit the 10-reject mark, and got an in-depth rework – I’m pleased with the outcome, so hopefully it’ll pick up a hit soon ….

- maintain current crit group commitments

Absolutely up to date on this one ….

- complete the “How to Think Sideways” course

I’m behind on this …. I urgently need to knuckle down and put in a good couple of weeks work on it. I got stalled out on the lesson that deals with synopses, query letters and proposals, because they’re so *not fun* and such high-risk activities that I just went into shut-down. However, I need to do these so as soon as I’ve got the Disconnection rewrite under my belt, I’m taking a time out and catching up. Honest.

 Anneth:

- finalise, prepare synopsis and query letters and get out on the submission rounds

Not started! I am so chicken!!! (Plus it’s with my critique group at the moment so will be back with editing needs …..) (and lots of other excuses). I will prepare the synopsis & query letter this quarter, put through any crit-driven changes in Q3 and get it out on the rounds by the end of September.

 Serpent of Colchis:

- complete edit by end of Q1 2009 – DONE!

 Disconnection

- rewrite by end Q1 2009

In progress. It’s a little more extensive than an edit write-in, since the edit pass I did a couple of years ago (the shame of it!!) showed up some major shortcomings which I’ve addressed, and I’ve added in an entirely new sub-plot which both links-in and underscores the main plot activity, so I’ve got about 15k of the original 80-odd-k I wrote that can be re-used, the rest is entirely new. I’m estimating around a 75k finished MS, of which I’ve got 19k written, mostly thanks to FMWriters ‘March Madness’ challenge to write 3k a day.

Writing 3k a day is a tough call when it means that I’ve got to generate 1k/hour out of my daily 3hr writing session. What I found was that I could maintain that sort of pace & intensity for the first 5 days without too much problem, but the last 2 days turned into a real battle for words. At least part of the problem was that this wasn’t standard ‘first draft’ writing, where the words just spill onto the page in more-or-les random fashion, this is a re-write and is a much more controlled and calculating process, less ‘muse’ and more ‘me’ with much closer attention on technical details than I’d normally put into a first draft. So it’s been much more draining as an exercise. My conclusion is that for *this project* what I’m going to do is maintain an intense 5-day-on @ 3k words schedule, but then effectively take the weekends off for critiquing and short storying and blogging and reading and other *fun* things, to stop my enthusiasm stalling to the point where I can’t bear to look at the damn MS. AGAIN.

Textile arts/crafting – from a business perspective, this is more or less where I want it to be right now, though I have branched out to an Etsy shop this year. There are a couple of objectives I want to state, though they feel a little nebulous at this stage.

- try 1 new stitch, technique or craft I haven’t tried before each month

- shame on me! I’ve been so manic, the only new thing I’ve tried is smocking. I liked it, I think I will do it again, and can see several applications (just not in clothing) where it could make a glorious decorative statement. It is rather a labour of love, and once I’d mastered the stitches it’s rather monotonous to do – I’m not sure I’d want to smock an adult garment, for example!!!

- stick to my ‘buy handmade’ pledge

I’ve not bought much for either the house or for myself this year, beyond some supplies for Magpies and a couple of gifts. Sadly, the boy presents I got were stock-from-toyshop because I wasn’t organised enough on the handmade front to get something in time, and it’s difficult to find *good* handmade toys and games for children over toddler age, particularly boys who aren’t necessarily interested in personal ornamentation. Difficult, but not impossible – will try harder!

- stick to my ‘wardrobe refashion’ pledge

on track with that! Have done some refashions for both me and Bellaboo, more to follow …. in my (copious – hah!) spare time …

- do at least one of Marysa’s lovely courses at the Otter Bindery

It’s still on the agenda, but I’ve not been able to get to one recently …. I’m devastated that this weekend she’s doing Japanese Book-Binding and I can’t make it. No FAir!

Personal - not so much here, though with so much going on in the above two, one of them must be:

- REMEMBER I HAVE A FAMILY

- I will take at least 2 weeks holiday this year

 - oooh, ooooh – I’m on track with this!!! I took  a week off for Feb half-term!!!

- I will try at least 1 new thing with at least 1 of my children every month

- well, kind of, but not in a structured way …. I took Bellaboo to the swimming pool & we both had a fantastic time just splashing about. One to try again. Rumpus & I made chocolate chip banana cake. I think he enjoyed cleaning the bowl out more afterwards …. I need to be more relaxed about both mess and the need to do things exactly right, but I think the important thing is to appreciate the one-to-one time that we otherwise miss out on. That came to light in full effect with Honey last weekend …. for whatever reason (mainly her deep immersion in Harry Potter) we hadn’t had any one-to-one time for ages, and on Sunday I washed & conditioned her hair & gave her a head massage and then sat and brushed and dried it to salon standard over the brush – it was just gorgeous to spend the time with her, and made me realise how overlooked she gets because she is so mature and steady and doesn’t need the constant “supervision” the younger ones get. Doesn’t seem fair she misses out, really. My objective is to try to get Bellaboo to sleep and then spend a bit of time with Honey once the others have gone to sleep, just chatting or sewing or playing scrabble/shut-the-box/uno/whatever. I think she needs it – her teacher says she’s rather lost her way this term, and whilst her symptoms match up with classic pre-teen, I don’t think that means I can (as the school helpfully suggest ) just wait it out.

- I will work through the “How to talk/how to listen” book

shame on me! Haven’t even opened it ….

- go to bed before midnight at least 4 times a week

oh dear. can’t remember the last time I did …. tonight, I will!

- Books/Reading

- I will read at least 20 books this year, and I will (try to) not buy any more books (excl below) until I’ve caught up my backlog

- Crystal Line – Anne McCaffrey

- Tortilla Flat – John Steinbeck

- Perfume – Patrick Suskind

- I will catalogue the existing collection on Library Thing

8/32 shelves listed, 3 cartons not even started. A long way to go ….

- After cataloguing the existing collection, I will rationalise it, and divest duplicates, those I won’t read again and the misfits in the first edition collection

- I will reinvest the proceeds of any divestments in new acquisitions that fit with the first ed/rare collection

- house and garden

- grow more fruit and veg this year than we did last year – stick to the planting and maintenance plan

well, that at least is on track …. garden is starting to come together, and the potting shed is looking like day-of-the-triffids …. need to start planting out and getting further successional sowings done. April is a bit manic on the gardening front, I don’t see that much else is going to happen!

- reduce waste again to 1/2 a bin bag every week

That’s going pretty well, and we got an unexpected bonus as the council have announced a switch to wheely bins plus kitchen caddies for food waste as of September, so that’s all good. I look at our 1/2 to 1 bag per week against next-door’s  usual 5 or so, and wonder if I should offer to help them reduce theirs …..

- take another 5% off our total energy usage for the year

My crusade to minimise electricity usage continues in the face of familial intransigence: tho the children have mostly got the “TURN IT OFF” message, t’o-m is consistently the worst culprit, despite my best efforts to represent money-saving aspects …. sigh. The battle has a way to go, but we’re more-or-less holding steady against last year – which is actually pretty good, considering the addition of laptop & Wii to the household. I’ve signed up for Selvedge’s pledge to turn off the tumble-dryer, tho admittedly it won’t save much because it more or less exists with an ‘in emergency break glass panel’ isolation and only really gets used for desperate & immediate nappy needs, and/or holiday packing.

- declutter and redecorate loft, improve my workspace

Did a massive declutter and reorganise, but little has happened since then. I need to decorate and put some shelving up, so that I can shift the 3 big boxes of books onto shelves, and evacuate the copies of Economist/New Scientist/Resurgence/National Geographical out of their storage boxes & onto shelves where theyre more accessible. Difficult to set aside time to do it, because my task-time in the week is Bellaboo’s sleep time – so drilling & that sort of carry on is not an option. Sigh. Looks like it might be a rainy-weekend’s work later in the year ….

- list and sort out all the little leftover jobs now the refurb is finished

Well, we made a list, and it’s more or less been allocated. It’s just a question of working through it now! Things are starting to happen – the kitchen walls are finally de-tiled, re-plastered and ready to paint. We’ve got, we think, a solution to the missing kitchen-floor-tile situation, subject to t’o-m being able to prise them off the floor somewhere else intact. Curse you, Porcelanosa, for discontinuing our tile!!!!

- and last but not least, get my BMI back down to 22. It’s completely out of control since Bellaboo arrived, and I don’t think I can call it baby fat any more. It’s just fat. It must go.

Well, the least said about this, the better. It’s one step forward and 2 back at the moment. I’ve been trying to get into a routine with it, and have been stymied at every turn by illness and injury – either my own or others!! I am, though, determined not to bail out on this, so once I’m clear of the latest cough (me), swollen knee (me), stomach bug (Rumpus) & clock-change induced insomnia (Bellaboo) I’m getting right back to it. I *so* need a Time Turner. Still can’t find one on ebay!

Now here’s a fun little meme, and one that proves to me that you can hocum yourself with just about anything – i.e. you see what you want to see, and the simplest and broadest sets of data can set you off on an odd mental trail that helps you realise some insights into yourself and your behaviour. Thus with fortune-telling . . . you pick the relevant data and apply it to yourself, and ignore the rest!

Marina over at Pecked by Ducks ran this a couple of weeks ago, and I thought I’d pick it up and play with it a while. It’s simple and fun. Go to google, type in ‘<your name> needs’ and search. What do the needs that are listed mean to you?

Here’s what I got:

Leila needs to play her wild card …

Leila needs to pay attention to the little details …

Leila needs a strong motive …

Leila needs a friend …

Leila needs to learn some interview skills …

Leila needs a scientist ….

Leila needs vodka ….

Leila needs something to fill in the gap …

Leila needs to be the princess ….

Leila needs a role model ….

Leila needs to do her homework …

Leila needs to be more aggressive ….

What does this set of needs tell me about myself? Why pick these out as relevant over any others? Some, simply, were funny (Leila needs a vodka, for example, appealed purely because after a weekend of hedonistic enjoyment, reality isn’t as much fun and I could use something to numb the impact )

Other things speak to me on a deeper level. For example, the idea of needing a role model, of being more aggressive and of doing my homework resonate in terms of my textile art – I need to find someone successful in the same/similar field, with a similar business model to my own, and understand how it is that they are successful and what I can learn from them to help me on my way. I need to do my homework – understand what the market wants, needs & expects in more detail and focus my work towards meeting that a little more in order to trigger some orders, rather than pleasing myself at almost every turn, and hoping that enough like-minded people react in the same way, and with sufficient strength, to place orders and commissions with me. And I need to be more aggressive in my marketing, in following through and following up on contacts, at self-publicity when the occasion presents – for example, I need to be a bit more confident in talking about my work to random people and in dishing out business cards at every available opportunity . . .

Other areas are those of self-recognition – I need a friend is less about needing and making new friends, and more about recognising that I am not ‘an Ilande, entire and whole of myself’ – I need my friends (and my family) to support and understand me, and I need to give them that same support and understanding – mutual aid and benefit. And understanding that at times I do need to be the ‘princess’, to be at the centre of things, and to get recognition and reward for the things I do, for my achievements, large and small. This includes recognising them in myself, and acknowledging them internally, as well as the external validations and lauds of others. Needing a strong motive is clear. If I don’t have one, I don’t move, and I think I’ve learned the lesson well enough over the years that there’s a strong distinction between ‘want’ and ‘need’, and also that in the list of ‘things I’d like to do’, there always has to be some sort of prioritisation, and I need to examine my motivation for wanting to do these apparently incompatible activities, understand the drive, and work out how to either realise it (given sufficiently strong motives) or to translate that need into something that is more compatible with my current lifestyle, commitments and routines.

The other needs all relate to my writing. I need to play a wild card in the sense that I must dig deeper and further into the ideas and sweet-spot areas that spark my muse, to try to let go of my more rational, controlling self and drop the barriers of fear etc that stop me going too far into my nightmares and downloading them into my stories. I’m not talking about any sort of catharsis here, any sort of personal therapy or resolution, just to be more in touch with the creatures of my deep imagination and to let them out into the stories – where it’s probably a safer environment for them to explore the limits and boundaries of their capability. To do so does not endow them with any special power to escape and become real.  Interviewing skills I need in relation to my characters, to get more sense of who they are and what they want, and how that interacts with and drives on the conflicts inherent to the story set-up – that will bring more depth into my writing, as will paying more attention to the little details of setting and grammar and sentence structure. The scientist is the part that applies method, coherence and structure over the top of the stories, that changes them from well-written but pointless sketches into fully-fledged and marketable stories, and Holly’s course is working on that side.

Hmmmm.

This came out much more in depth than I thought it would - a simple and fun meme has triggered a number of thoughts and recognitions about myself and my work that I need to keep in mind. As such, a useful exercise!