One of the interesting things about keeping a regular blog is that I can play the “one year ago today” game. It gives me a fragmentary look at how my life has changed over the year. Today I decided to take things a little further and I year hopped all the way back to the beginning. Five years ago this month I started this blog. That was back before most people knew what the word “blog” meant. In internet terms my blog is ancient. My life has changed drastically since then.
One year ago today, I was enjoying a visit from my younger sister and her two kids. I was preparing Hold on to Your Horses for print, and frequently terrified that I was going to do something wrong. I was also sorting out how to manage working from home without compromising on the amount of attention I gave to my kids. (I ended up compromising the amount of attention I gave to household chores and resource management instead.) I also stopped writing fiction for a year.
Two years ago today, I had not yet taken on the layout and design work for books. I was helping two kids with a particularly rough school year, one child with difficult learning challenges, and the fourth child with potty training. I’d just sold my first story and recently written Hold on to Your Horses. I was very focused on house and kids.
Three years ago today, we were in the midst of preparing for our first ever Schlock book shipping. I was trying to wrap my head around the logistics of shipping thousands of books at once. I was also chasing a toddler and preschooler constantly. Keeping them safely occupied was a daily challenge. But I didn’t mind the chaos, because we’d just had the first evidence that Howard being a cartoonist could actually pay our bills.
Four years ago today, I was very much focused on making do with very few resources. We were living month to month. We never had more than three months’ worth of bills stashed away, and frequently it was far less than that. Howard was scrambling to take corporate cartooning contracts to make ends meet. I spent lots of time gardening, canning, and figuring out how to entertain/educate the kids without spending any money. I spent most Saturday mornings combing through garage sales trying to find bargains on things that we needed and things that could be stashed away for Christmas.
Five years ago today, I had not even started this blog yet. I started it about a week later. Howard was still working long hours for Novell, then coming home to work even more hours on Schlock Mercenary. He was also traveling for Novell once or twice each month. I managed the kids and the house solo much of the time. I had an infant, a preschooler, a kindergartener, and a third-grader. I did not know that we only had four months before Howard would leave Novell forever.
Five years can make quite a difference.