partitioning my day
I’m not posting as often or as well as I have in the past. My brain keeps being full of thoughts which interfere with composition.
As time races forward to November 16 (the first shipping day for Blackness Between,) I find myself with an endless task list of things I must do. I have to get started right now and do some of it every day, otherwise November will host a catastrophe. However the list is so long that it isn’t possible for me to get it all done in a single day. The task is so large that it can’t be done all at once. This means that the looming business tasks threaten to take over my whole life as I scramble to get it all done. I need to not let that happen. I have enough time. I need to say that louder so that I listen to myself. I HAVE ENOUGH TIME. Yes the job is huge, but if I just do some of it each day it will all get done. I have to carve out spaces of time for other things, like my kids. In these spaces of time business stuff is not allowed. Mornings before school and evenings from dinner to bedtime belong to my children. I need to pay attention to them. I need this and they need this because during the rest of the day they hear a lot of “I just need to finish this” and “I’ll be there in a minute.” Switching gears that way is good for me too. I need to remember WHY it is so important to work on the book mailing.
Book sales continue. The first rush of optimism has worn off now that the flood of orders has slowed to a trickle. I’m greedy, I want more people to order. Last April we shipped out 1800 books. This time I’d like to break 2000. Right now we’ve sold about 1062. Orders are coming in at a rate of about 12 per day. That means in the next 21 days we can expect another 252 orders. That wouldn’t even bring us close. Oops. I’m still in the “no business thoughts allowed” time. Better go play with my kids.