I woke up this week. Not literally. It’s not like I spent the first three weeks of January (and November and December) sleeping all the time. I was awake far more hours than not. Yet this week feels like waking up. It is like remembering what well-rested feels like because the baby began sleeping through the night. That analogy is actually fairly apropos. Because this week I was not called over to a school to manage an emotional crisis. Not once. Which is a startling difference from the last few months when the vast majority of my work days were interrupted.
January is always a strange month. The beginning of it is often buried in tasks that are required to tie off the loose ends from the year before. I always have piles of accounting work to do. This year I also had many meetings, doctor’s appointments, and arrangements relating to my son’s new schooling format. Additionally, we had new health insurance. We’ve had the same insurance plan for a decade, so I had to wrap my head around the coverages and costs. The process has made me realize how very bad our old plan was. For the first time we have help covering all the mental health care that we’ve been paying out of pocket. So the news was mostly good, but I couldn’t be sure it would be until I started using the plan. January also needs to launch the new year’s efforts. This means that I have to wrap my head around the project list and start moving toward new goals. I used to be able to do all the transitioning in the first week of the year, leaving the rest of January for a mid-winter project. This year was more complicated. There were lots of loose ends. There are also lots of projects to launch.
At least now I’m finally rolling on new and exciting efforts. LTUE is only three weeks away. They’ve posted their schedule and I’m excited for the topics I’ll get to discuss. Before that I get to go on a personal trip to visit a friend, which I’ll very much enjoy. I’ve finally contacted a cover designer to get better covers for the Cobble Stones books. I’ve been etching glassware to see if I can find a process that is feasible to produce product for Schlock customers. We’ve also been having Schlock RPG meetings for the big project we’ll be launching later this year. The one thing I haven’t done enough of this week was working on actual writing. Some weeks are like that, but I really need to get back to it, particularly since my solo presentation at LTUE will be about breaking through writing blockages.
It has been a good week. I’d like to have another one like it.
I know exactly what you mean. I felt like that last week only then Rosie got sicker instead of better and I had to schedule a new round of appointments, but we finally got our vision health insurance cards/info, and other things feel like they are clicking into place.
Would love to learn to etch glass, and also to see etched products from you guys. As I am getting older I am leaning more toward using glasses that are not identical (partly to help make sure germs do not get passed from me and R to Brian). So I would encourage you to consider doing a set of unique glasses, rather than, like, here are four identical ones, or whatever.
I was really stressed when we got to January and my insurance cards hadn’t arrived yet. I did lots of research and thinking, but it is all so complicated that until I saw that medical expenses were actually being covered, I didn’t quite believe it.
On the etching: these are hand crafted, so we’ll be selling individual glasses, not sets. Or if we do sets it’ll be a “collect them all” set with multiple designs.