Sandra Tayler

Morning After the Schlock Kickstarter Challenge Coin Launch

By / February 21, 2013 / 3 Comments

The challenge coin Kickstarter is a bit like jumping out of a plane knowing that the backpack you’re wearing is at least a parachute, but that it might unfold to be a hang glider. But when you pull the cord what unfolds is a jet pack. Right now this thing is zooming fast and we’re trying to learn how to steer while not crashing. Then in 30 days we have to stick the landing.

Happy. Grateful. Terrified that we’ll make some horrible error.

Let Me Tell You About My Day

By / February 20, 2013 / 6 Comments

This was a day doomed to fragmentation and distraction before it even began. First there was the doctor’s appointment I had to schedule for a child in the middle of the morning. It was for one of those not-emergencies, but have checked as soon as convenient type issues. Middle of this morning was the soonest non-emergency appointment, so off we went. As suspected, nothing alarming, just some routine blood work and advice. Except “blood work” never feels routine until you’ve had lots of experience with needles, which my kids thankfully have not. So we got to deal with post-adrenaline reactions that required extra food and attention. Again, not a big deal, just important. We went almost six years with hardly ever seeing a doctor, but in the last twelve months it feels like we’re making up for that in minor complaints that still need attention. Whee.

So my plan for the day was to work on scout stuff (about which I will have many words in a moment) for the hour between kids off to school and the doctor appointment. Except then the Kickstarter approval came in. Howard has spent the last month thinking about a challenge coin project. He’s agonized over price points and possibilities. He had spread sheets and kept adjusting them. He had everything ready to go, except that Kickstarter likes there to be a video to go with a project. Howard asked me to help with the video. So as the kids were getting ready for school, I rearranged the furniture in the front room to set up a mini-film studio. This included setting up our convention banner and book display. It also meant shoving aside all the boxes of merchandise that I still haven’t put away after LTUE. I even brought up a stand lamp to provide some additional lighting. The kids waved goodbye and we were ready to film when Howard’s friend Richard called to talk about the Kickstarter project. Richard is something of an expert, so the call went on for awhile. I went downstairs to work on scout things while Howard conversed.

I am our scout troops Advancement Chair. This means I hold the password to the online record keeping system and the responsibility to make sure that all paperwork is filed correctly. I hold this job as a service to the men and boys in my congregation who love scouting. When I speak with them and hear the boys talking about their experiences, I’m glad to give the service. However, the BSA loves paperwork. It is crazy with the quantity of forms, reports, and signatures. Each level of achievement has its own process. In theory I can do all of the work from my house on my computer. The actual amount of work should take me 30 minutes of data entry. The online system is so very slow that I sometimes have to wait five minutes between page loads, and the process requires many page loads. If I’m loading a roster, that can take twenty minutes. It is ridiculous and infuriating. I could use more words to describe exactly how I feel about having my time wasted, but I think that’s all I’m going to say about that.

I began scout things, accomplished no scout things in forty minutes, helped Howard film video, went to the doctor, came home, and spent an additional thirty minutes attempting scout things from home. I was more successful when I drove over to the scout office where I was very nice to the local scout employees who did not build the system and do not deserve my ire. I did make extensive use of the online survey which asks about my experience with their system. It asked me once for each report. I had to do five reports. I used different words each time that survey box opened up. I doubt it will do any good. But I departed the office will all my scout work done and ready for Boards of Review in the evening.

My brain was then fried. But kids had to be retrieved from school. Patch had to immediately turn around and head off to cub scouts. Link needed direction to some money earning jobs around the house. I was supposed to supply dinner, but mostly threw a pizza into the oven. Then the start time for the Board of Review had to be adjusted earlier to accommodate a scout. Also two additional scouts needed rank advancements, and there were three merit badges which had not been mentioned to me. Tomorrow will feature another trek to the scout office, three more reports, purchasing all the badges, and assembling everything for the Court of Honor.

I came home just in time for Howard to start his Kickstarter. Three minutes later it had funded and five minutes after that it had surpassed all the listed stretch goals. Howard and I spent the next hour frantically updating with new stretch goals, adding funding options, and triple checking to make sure we did not accidentally over-promise anything. Having a project fund quickly is really exciting, but kind of scary because there is no time to consider calmly. We had to throw things up in a frantic hurry to keep up with the demonstrated enthusiasm. We’re still playing catch up. We need to add tiers and stretch goals, but our brains are tired from all the math. Howard’s spread sheets were useless in the first fifteen minutes. Now we need to make entirely new spreadsheets and Howard has to design additional coins that he didn’t expect to have to do until at least next week. So we can put that into tomorrow along with our regular work.

So tomorrow already features: Scout stuff. Kickstarter stuff. Putting my front room back together. Picking up the prescription the doctor gave us. Returning the movies I checked out from the library for the kids to watch during LTUE. Signing tax papers. Oh, and did I mention Gleek gets her braces put on tomorrow?

All of this is swirling in my head as I realize I really should have put the younger kids to bed thirty minutes earlier. That is only half done when Kiki realizes that we’ve missed a scholarship application deadline. And I start trying to make sense of it all by writing a really long blog post.

So now three fourths of my children are in bed. The Kickstarter looks like it will pass the latest stretch goal before we get up tomorrow morning. And I kind of want things to hold still for awhile just so that I can see what they all are.

Change is Scary and Necessary

By / February 19, 2013

This morning Howard and I made an executive decision, The Body Politic will not have a bonus story in the printed book. Howard has been wrestling with this story for six months, but it still is not working and we can’t afford the three more months that are necessary for the story to sort itself out. We have to have a new book for the summer conventions. So instead of Howard slogging through despair with this intractable story, we’re going to fill the extra space with interesting new footnotes and marginalia. Making the decision lifted a weight from us. Suddenly we are in the last rush to get the book done, which is always a fun part for me. It is the part where every day I can see us get closer to sending the book away for print. So we are relieved, but we feel guilty for being relieved because we know that there are fans out there who love the bonus stories. They will be sad and disappointed. Also Howard spent some time being sad because he hates to break the bonus story tradition even if it is just for this book. There is also some measure of fear, what if this decision is the breaking point where fans decide we’ve sold out and they all go do something else? Happiness, relief, sadness, excitement, worry, and fear fill our heads this morning.

It has me thinking about businesses, creative projects, and change. Schlock Mercenary will be thirteen years old in June. In the course of those years the strip has seen changes in artwork and story telling with Howard’s growing skill. We left Keenspot, joined Blank Label Comics, then struck out solo a few years later. Switching to the new website was a fearful change, as was hiring Travis to be our colorist, and ending the Schlocktoberfest tradition. We knew that each of these decisions was right, but we worried that our fans would not agree with us. People do not like their beloved things to change. Except things must change. Howard and I have to change. Both the Schlock Mercenary strip and our business need to change and grow or else they will go stale. I’m hoping that some of the time freed up by shelving this bonus story can go into the creation of more electronic editions. Even better would be to launch into production on Longshoreman of the Apocalypse so we could put out two books this year and finally be making steps to catch up with the online archive. Funny how a change can be obvious and necessary, but still feel risky.

As Effective as a Jellyfish Swimming Against the Current

By / February 18, 2013 / 1 Comment

My front room is a jumble of boxes which stocked our LTUE tables with merchandise, but which now need to be sorted and put away. My inbox is full of emails all of which deserve considered replies. My to do list is full of things I want to get done. Any time I pull one of these things into my brain thinking that I will focus on it, I instead find myself checking twitter or wandering around the kitchen in search of some unspecified food which will make me happier. I have to face the fact that today is not going to be my most effective day. I did manage to write up my presentation notes. I also got dressed for the day just after lunch. Then I tackled the problem of convincing Amazon.com that we should be allowed to accept payments through Kickstarter, the fact that this required me to put on clothes and drive to a location with a fax machine did not thrill me. The fact that it is all still pending thrills me even less. Howard’s Kickstarter is ready to go, now we just have to wait in administrative limbo. Not a great place when I’m still tired enough that any small obstacle feels like the great wall of China. For the rest of the day I will feel accomplished if I manage to fix dinner, not eat a million cookies, and make everyone go to bed on time.

Structuring Life to Make Room for Creativity

By / February 18, 2013 / 7 Comments

This blog post is a write-up from my presentation notes. I’ve given this presentation at LTUE. I’ll be giving it again at LDS Storymakers in May. As I wrote this from my notes, I noticed a major difference in the flow of a presentation and of a blog post. Speaking to a group is more conversational and I included anecdotes and examples that I’m leaving out of this post, because if I were to include them this post would be 15,000 words long. I’ve chosen not to break the presentation into 10 separate posts because I feel like having these abbreviated notes all in one place will be more useful than a blog series. Not included in this post is the discussion that resulted from the question and answer session at the end of the presentation. A recording was made of my LTUE presentation. I’ll link it when it is available on the internet.

I am a busy person. I have four children who attend three schools, all of which feel like they can email me. The schools have attached PTAs who want pieces of my time. I also share a business with my husband where I do the accounting, order management, shipping, customer support, layout work, art direction, and a host of smaller tasks. I have a house which gets disheveled if I don’t pay attention. I have to eat on a daily basis as do my people and the cat. I am not exaggerating when I say that I am busy. I’m busy even though I am constantly trying to be less busy. In this I’m not unique, because everyone is busy. Life fills to overflowing with things to do. Yet, last year I wrote a novel’s worth of blog entries. I wrote a picture book, Strength of Wild Horses, which I’ll be Kickstarting in a couple of months. I remodeled sections of my house, wrote letters, sewed. The remainder of this presentation gives some principles which allowed me to make space for these creative things. Not included is the advice to set aside time for creative things, which is good advice, however I feel it important to discuss how to structure life so that the time can be made available.

1. Identify Your Support Network
I could not accomplish what I do without the support of those who share my house. My husband could not accomplish what he does without my support. The first step in adjusting your life to make room for your creative pursuits is to talk to the people closest to you. You need to identify what sacrifices they may have to make and whether they are willing to make them. It has to be a conversation and the sacrificing needs to be reciprocal. Sometimes the people around you will not be allies, they will be obstacles or enemies. Then you have some hard decisions to make. You have to decide whether to value the relationships or your creative dream. The answers will be individual. Sometimes the creativity needs to be put down for a while, other times it is necessary to declare a creative space and let everyone be mad about it until they adjust. I recommend sitting down and making a list of who is affected by the creative space you need, how they are affected, what support you hope for from them, and what you might need to give in return to keep the relationship balanced. Making this list will require self awareness about your creative pursuit.

2. Arrange a Physical Space
You need to have a home for your creative pursuit, the space does not have to be large. For the longest time my space for my writing was contained inside my laptop. That worked really well for me because it was portable. I could take it anywhere, open it up and be in my writing space. Once I entered my writing space, the writing thoughts would unfold in my brain. When Howard began cartooning, we put all his cartooning things in a box on the kitchen counter. Then we shifted things around so he had a drawing table in our front room. Right now he has an office with a computer desk, a drawing table, a crafting table, and a second drawing desk at a local comics shop. Creating a physical space for your creative pursuit declares that it matters, it also provides a visual reminder that you might want to do your creative things. For more thoughts on spaces and how they affect us, I recommend reading The Not So Big House by Sarah Susanka.

3. Understand Your Biorhythms
Everyone has alert times of day and low energy points. Learning when yours are can make a huge difference in your creative output. Ideally you will put your block of creative time at your most creative time of day. This is not always possible, but knowing when you are most creative gives you something to aim for. A common pattern is to be high energy first thing in the morning with an energy lull in the afternoon and another energy burst in the evening. Some creators are at their best late at night, others before dawn. Find your pattern.

4. Use Supports for Your Schedule
In general, creative people struggle with creating structure for their lives. Howard and I depend heavily on the imposed structure from our kids’ school schedules. It gives is a required time to be up in the morning. We know that we have to do kid stuff until they are out the door. Then we switch to work tasks. Willpower is a limited resource. This is why I try to set up my creative schedule to require as little willpower as possible. I train myself that right after lunch I write for awhile. That way I don’t have to think about if I feel like it. I don’t have to muster the energy to get moving. I’m already moving for lunch, I just let that motion carry me into doing something creative.

5. Master the Small Stretch
Humans have a tendency to get excited and try to overhaul their entire life at once. They want to put writing in the schedule, and start exercising every day, and always have the dishes done. They want to Do All The Things. Then they wear out very quickly. Don’t overhaul your life, make one small change. Give that change time to settle in and become a habit. Once it does, you’ll be able to see what the next small change needs to be. The accumulation of small adjustments will change life dramatically over time. It can also help unsupportive family and friends become accustomed to creative things when they see that supporting creativity does not require a complete overhaul of life.

6. Learn to Work in Fragments
Creative people tend to want to work in big bursts, to immerse themselves for hours, or days, only to emerge when they’ve exhausted their energy. This is extremely disruptive to a busy schedule. Learning how to open up your creative thing and work on it for ten minutes or an hour is an incredibly powerful capability. This is where having a physical space for your creativity can be so very useful. You can train your brain that when you enter your creative space all the thoughts are there waiting for you. Working in fragments is particularly important if you are a parent of young children, because they cut your time into itty bitty fragments.

7. Ponder the Tortoise and the Hare
I used to hate the Aesop fable about the tortoise and the hare. It wasn’t until I got older that I realized I hated it because I was a hare, and in the story the hare loses. My natural inclination is to tackle a project and not stop until it is done. Unfortunately most creative projects are too big to be managed in a huge burst of energy. You can write a novel during NaNoWriMo, but at the end you are exhausted and the work on that book has barely begun. But if you learn to work in fragments, you can teach yourself to be like the tortoise. You can just keep stepping forward. It feels like you’re not getting anywhere. You work endlessly for what feels like no result at all, but there will come a moment when you reach the top of a hill and can see how far all those little steps have taken you. I truly admire the natural tortoises of the world. They get stuff done.

8. Health and Spoon Theory.
I began with a brief description of spoon theory, which is that we only have limited amounts of energy available in a given day. For visualization purposes that energy is represented as spoons. Those who are healthy are allotted more spoons than those who struggle with illness. Each task of daily life uses up spoons. There is inherent unfairness in energy distribution and this is hard. Sometimes energy which you wanted to go into creative pursuits will have to be spent on other things. I don’t have good answers for this, but I don’t feel like this presentation is complete without acknowledging that health can be a major difficulty. Also I want those who have good health to be aware that not everyone does, and maybe sometimes they can share some of their energy with those who have much less.

9. Get Outside Your Box
Creativity does not burst into spontaneous existence. I think of it as a deep subconscious aquifer full of all the stuff that accumulates from the places I go and people I talk to. I drill a well down into it and draw from it when I am writing. Sometimes when we are trying to organize life to maximize creative output we make the mistake of removing from the schedule all the things that fill us up. Playing video games or watching television may look like a waste of time, but for some people those things are essential to filling the creative aquifer. Each person will have different things that fill them up. I garden or visit new places. Howard paints and goes to movies. Both of us visit with friends. Find the things that fill you up and know that sometimes you’ll need to choose the filling activities instead of the creation activities.

10. Your System Will Break
You’ve followed all the steps outlined above, you’ve crafted the perfect schedule, everything falls into places and flows, but then suddenly it all falls apart. Something changed, things always change. My kids get older, their needs shift, I shift, we enter a different part of the business cycle, school gets out for the summer, school starts for the fall. The list of ways life can change is innumerable. When your system falls apart, just grab the best pieces from it and build a new schedule. In another few months that one will fall apart too. Having your schedule fall apart can actually be a gift because sometimes it forces us to really look at all the pieces and build something that works even better. When I was a young parent it felt like each overhaul of the schedule made something completely different. Now I can see that patterns emerge. These days I don’t have to overhaul very often, I just have to tweak.

This is when we moved into the Question and Answer portion of the presentation. I remember we talked a little bit about how to handle internet distraction and I recommended taking a break to see which parts of the internet you actually missed. Other excellent questions were asked, but I’m afraid that I can’t remember any more. This presentation was followed by two full days of conversations and they all blend together. Each of the points above could be expanded into a full discussion and blog post of its own. Perhaps someday I’ll do that. For now I hope that this set of notes gives people a place to start as they’re contemplating how to fit creativity in with everything else that they are already doing.

After LTUE 2013 is Complete

By / February 17, 2013 / 2 Comments

The extent of my post-convention fatigue became apparent when I crouched down with a scoop of kibble to pour into the cat’s bowl. She was standing nearby, very intent on being there the moment the food hit the bowl, except I began to lose my balance. It was a slight bobble, the sort I usually correct without even noticing, but I couldn’t. I teetered and the cat startled, spinning to face me with wide eyes as her feet tried to bolt in three directions at once. I think it was the skitter noise of her claws on the hardwood floor that really undid me. I began to laugh. The laughing absorbed all of my remaining energy and balance abandoned me completely. A slow crumple landed me on the floor, head leaning on a nearby stool, my knees surrounded by all the food that had fallen when my limp fingers released the scoop. It was not that funny. I knew it wasn’t and that was part of the reason I could not stop laughing. I laughed because I was too tired to stand up again, because the cat sported a tail like a bottle brush, because kibble was everywhere, because it was so ridiculous for me to be laughing this much, because my children had accumulated in a hovering crowd wondering what on earth was wrong with their mother.

“Mom? Are you laughing or crying? Are you okay?” They asked.
Yes. I was both laughing and crying. Everything was fine, but I really needed to curl up into a ball until the twitching tension in my body calmed. I’d spent three really good days, filled to over flowing with good things. I’d just reached complete overload and required a complete system shutdown so that I could reboot and function again.

One of the greatest gifts given to me during this LTUE was parceled out in tiny pieces over all three days: I have a professional identity separate from Howard’s. It used to be that I was the business arm of Schlock Mercenary, Howard’s handler and support. It is an accurate description, because I do those things. I like being an integral part of Schlock. Yet I also wanted to be myself with my own things. It sometimes got frustrating to only ever be relevant as an appendage. “And this is Sandra who makes things run for Howard.” In the past three days I was only introduced that way once. All of the other times people mentioned my blog, my picture book, or my presentations. They might also mention my work for Schlock, but it became part of the picture rather than the whole of it. I saw it when people came to the table. They would talk to Howard and then they would come have a separate conversation with me because they had things to say about what I’ve created. For the past several years Howard and I have been working together to help me establish a separate professional identity. LTUE let me see that we’ve begun to succeed.

Another joy was setting up Kiki’s artwork on part of one table and having dozens of conversations with people who admired it. Kiki herself was able to have those conversations on Saturday when she sat next to her art and created something new. I love seeing her glow. It was not just the praise, but also the realization that the career she wants is actually possible, that there really are people out there who will buy her work because they love it. She sold three pieces, but the hope she brought home is far more valuable than the money.

I had a presentation and two panels, each of which went really well. I left feeling like there was lots more to discuss, but that we’d covered the truly essential pieces. Enough people came to tell me they enjoyed the presentations for me to know that I was part of something that was valuable to someone else. I also came away with new panel and presentation ideas. I’ll have to update my presentation list.

Then there were the conversations. I spoke with long-time friends who are in hard places right now. I rejoiced with friends who had good news. I joked with the pair of friends who traveled from Hawaii to stay in my house and help us with running our dealer room tables. I met people I’d only known online. I talked with fans who come back year after year to see what is new and who become friends. There were new people just discovering Schlock and my writing. Some came up simply because they’d been in a panel and wanted to talk further about the topic. We talked with long time business partners and new friends who needed advice. Often the conversations were short, like small gifts dropped off to be fully appreciated later. A few of the conversations ran across hours filled with topics both silly and important. Each was a gift of time and connection. I’m still turning them over in my head.

I frequently end up jellyfishing after conventions. I drift through my house like a jellyfish in a current. With the cat food incident I realized I’d pushed beyond drifting fatigue and into a realm of complete blitzed-out incapability. I lay in bed so exhausted and so wound up that I didn’t think sleep would ever come, but unable to muster the usual frustration I feel for insomnia. And it wasn’t insomnia really. Sleep arrived quite quickly, it was just that my body was informing me in no uncertain terms that we really should have rested long ago.

I woke Sunday morning with things still to do. Four children needed to eat breakfast and be herded into church clothes and off to the meetings. Our friends needed to be farewelled because they had a long drive ahead of them. I needed to figure out how to make myself suitably presentable for church while minimizing effort and maximizing comfort. My feet were not at all interested in wearing pretty shoes. Church was followed by a meeting during which I needed to be coherent and organized. I sat in corners at church, not asleep, but definitely conserving energy. After my meeting I came home and slept. This is all part of the convention recovery process. Tomorrow will be a day of re-establishing normal and clearing away the last of the convention thoughts and mess. I have follow up tasks for next week including writing up my presentation notes.

LTUE this year was an exceptionally good experience. I loved the Marriott venue and I hope they’ll make that into a permanent home.

Friday at LTUE

By / February 17, 2013

I can tell I’m conference tired when I open my laptop and discover that I did not actually post the words I wrote on Friday evening. So here they are now, and I’m off to write today’s thought:

On the second day of LTUE I came home instead of going out to dinner. I chose that for the sake of my son, who had spent the day with us discovering that there is nothing about working a booth or walking a convention that makes him happy. I wish it did. I wish we could share this with him, but we’ll have to seek out something else to share. He’d been good and patient, trying new things during the day, so I brought him home.

My house is full of reminders of things to be done and tasks which have gone ignored for two days. I switch the loads in the laundry machines. I pick up valentine candy detritus. The kids seem content to have me home, but they do not have the desperation which they used to show after I’d been gone all day. As I breathe the home air I realize that it is good for me to be here. I need to wind down. I need to make sure there are clean clothes to wear tomorrow. I need to spool out the thoughts in my brain and ponder the patterns that I’m seeing in LTUE and the people who attend. I remember when we were the strange newcomers to this long running symposium, Howard in his t-shirts and me shadowing him. In a hundred ways our experience here is smooth and happy because we know most of the organizers and they know us. LTUE really is a beautiful creation and I’m so glad to have a place in it.

Tomorrow I’ll be bringing Kiki to the show. She will fill a space at the table and love being there. She too is beginning to be a separate part of LTUE. More than one person comes to our table specifically to admire Kiki’s artwork. Having Kiki at the table more means that I will be at the table less. This is fine. My best convention moments are because of conversations and those happen almost anywhere.

Seven Paragraphs About LTUE

By / February 14, 2013 / 5 Comments

I came home to an explosion of valentines wrappers and cards strewn all over the kitchen table. All four kids were downstairs watching Avatar: The Last Airbender episodes, only Link felt the need to welcome me home with a hug. They were all fine and had been fine all afternoon while I was gone. I have reached the point where I do not need to obsessively plan contingencies and give detailed instructions when I’m going to be gone. The holiday also meant that the kids did not have a homework panic because none had been assigned. All was well at Chez Tayler.

People came up to me at the table, not to ask me questions about Howard, but to say hello and ask me about my writing and projects. This time I had answers for them, which is a huge improvement over last year when I stood behind a table of Howard’s things and only had one four-year-old book to show. The difference is in me, I have shifted inside, made space for my creative things, and bit by bit they accumulated over the course of a year. This year I can point to two books on the table. In a few months I hope to be able to point at four. I talk about those hopes and people are glad for me. Then they tell me about their hopes and I am glad for them.

Often it is the small conversations which stay with me, the seem inconsequential: talking about projects and events. But then one person will share some small piece of information which shifts the possibilities for someone else. I see it over and over as the people come to our table to talk to us and to each other. I love seeing that moment when a new future becomes visible or a solution is handed over. Sometimes I get to be part of that exchange, sometimes I am the recipient. At home I think of the faces I saw today, the conversations I had. I turn them over and examine them like a jeweler examines stones. Small moments shine, the people shine and I’m not even sure they realize it.

Publishing a book is often compared to giving birth with analogies drawn between pregnancy and writing. There is another similarity, authors share their publishing stories just as women will spontaneously tell labor horror stories to a pregnant woman. I hear stories that sound to me like glowing shining tales about the wonder and beauty of this process. Other tales clarify how badly this can all go wrong. I listen and I wish somehow the whole thing could be easier and less messy. The thing is that there are happy and horrible stories about every single available publishing path. Listening to some of these stories is educational so that pitfalls are identified: theoretically to be avoided. However listening to too many stories can leave me discouraged and wondering why I want to publish in the first place. Then I remember the people who come up to the table and tell me that my words made their lives better. I just need to keep on going and pray that I’ll muddle my way through some hybrid path that takes me to places where my words can continue to help.

The room was full when I walked in, I’d not really expected that. On other occasions when I’ve taught solo presentations I had between five and twelve people for an audience. The room was full and I walked to the front to lay out my presentation props: books that I might want to hold up as examples. In the end I forgot to hold them up. I forgot to mention several other things as well. This did not matter because somehow as I followed the bread crumbs of my presentation notes I was able to say the right things. I did not say all of the right things, but sometimes the whole room laughed, which is a pretty good sign of a presentation going well. I was also able to see moments when an audience member nodded or a head dipped to scribble a note. These are also good signs. Probably the most important thing I said was that some of what I said is the wrong advice for some of the audience because everyone has to find their own ways to build creativity into their lives. Sitting here and thinking about it, I keep thinking about additional things to say. Some of those will end up in the presentation notes I type up here for the blog next week. Others will wait until I give the presentation again at LDS Storymakers. Mostly I don’t know exactly what I said or how I said it, but people came to thank me afterward which means that for some of my audience I said exactly the right thing. There was a recording device in front of me I wonder if I will continue to think I did well when I listen to the recording. Yes it will be available on the internet. I’ll link it when it is.

Howard and I had solo presentations at the exact same hour. We made jokes about how our friends would have to pick which Tayler they liked best. I pictured myself with a mostly empty room next door to Howard’s full room while he made the audience laugh. Both of us had full audiences, which felt very happy to me. Howard’s presentation/workshop also went really well. I hope he gets a chance to give it again.

I was not sure if I should go out to dinner or rush home to the kids. I sort of split the difference, staying to eat for awhile then ducking out to go home. Partly I needed to make sure that all was well. (It was, even with valentines detritus strewn everywhere.) The other part was my need for the quiet of my house after the sociability of the convention. I needed to hug my children and be here for bedtime. The routine comforts us all and grounds me. I have to sit in my house with my fingers on the keyboard to unspool my thoughts, tucking them away for the night too. Tomorrow will be another full day. It begins early as I have a panel starting at 9 am.

My Life in Lists Today

By / February 13, 2013

Things I want to do today:
Soak up the quiet in my house so that I can enter three days of intense convention socializing feeling rested.
Write 2000 words of blog posts and fiction.
Think long, slow thoughts to help me sort all the kid emotional shifts of the past week.
Nap enough to catch up on sleep.
Finish re-reading The Help.
Have dinner at a restaurant with out of town friends.
Prepare for tomorrow’s solo presentation and write notes for the other two panels.
Write a letter.
Exercise.

Things I’m going to do today:
Locate and stack all the booth dressing supplies so they’re ready for transport to LTUE.
Assemble bundles.
Pack up merchandise for LTUE.
Make new price lists and signs for the booth.
Deliver a child to school late because he panicked about incomplete homework this morning even though I asked him multiple times last night and this morning if he had homework to do.
Tell a story in the car on the way over to the school which hopefully cements this as a learning experience which will help the child remember that “Do you have homework” means “Go check your backpack and planner” not “Think about it for two seconds and declare that you don’t.”
Double check all the accounting and sales supplies for the booth.
Make a trip to the storage unit to re-stock books and pick up booth supplies.
Fill up the car so I don’t run out of fuel driving to and from LTUE for three days.
Call to excuse Kiki’s absence yesterday and Link’s absence of last week (which I forgot to do previously.)
Wash all the clothes so we have clean things to wear for the next five days.
Fold some of the clothes.
Deliver a forgotten item to a child at school.
Clean the house so it is not embarrassing for guests to stay here.
Hem pants for Kiki.
Slim pants waistband for Gleek.
Put away sewing machine so it is out of the way for guests.
Buy foods that the kids can forage through while their parents are not home to supply meals.
Prepare for tomorrow’s presentation.
Fill orders, mail packages.
Write a quick note instead of a letter.
Wish I’d done more in advance so that the day before the convention is not always a mad scramble.
Make sure my kids get to their afternoon and evening activities.
Supervise homework time, with additional attention paid to making sure that we’re in a good position for the likely neglect of homework on Thursday and Friday while Mom is too busy/exhausted to pay attention.
Scramble to help my two elementary school kids have Valentines to hand out at school tomorrow.

Things I did in the past two days instead of the things I now have to do today:
Accounting and bill paying.
Shipping customer orders.
Customer support.
Took Link to take his driver’s permit test, which he’ll need to re-take next week.
Took three kids to Trafalga in an effort to put things that are important to them on the schedule.
Took care of a teenager with a head cold.
Visited a neighbor.
Stopped by again at neighbor’s to deliver a tool which will hopefully make her life easier.
Attended a committee meeting.
Fielded emails regarding scouts and an upcoming Board of Review.
Answered all the urgent and overdue emails. (I hope.)
Blogged.
Wrote some fiction words.
Wrote some letters.
Began re-reading The Help because it is a good book and because Kiki is reading it for school, so I want to be able to remember the story. Talking books with my daughter is fun.
Re-stocked my shipping room with mailing supplies.
Rearranged all the furniture in my boys’ room to un-bunk their beds, thus letting them know that I’m willing to perform physical labor and rearrange my schedule because sometimes they are more important than other stuff.

Too Many Parenting Things for One Day

By / February 12, 2013 / 2 Comments

Funny how I can come to the end of a day knowing I filled it with important things and yet still be buried under thoughts of how I could do better. Last weekend was one in which all my children burst open and the emotional issues which have been brewing burst forth where they must be addressed. It is actually a good process, that is how healing begins and it is much better than an extended brewing and festering. With the troubles out in the open, the problem solving portions of my brain begin to supply solutions. Most of these solutions involve me stepping up my game, doing more, being better. I’m trying to pause before implementing these solutions, because I am ever so slowly learning that I am not the sole provider of life fixes, that sometimes my proper role is to stay out of the way. Other times stepping up my game is exactly what I should do. I wish the troubles would come color coded so I could easily discern which approach to take.

An effort to step up my game is how I found myself on a Tuesday afternoon at an arcade / laser tag arena with four of my children. Link wanted to go and his trouble had to do with his wishes often being overlooked. I’ve been wanting to see the effects of exercise on Patch’s insomnia, which also seemed a good argument for making the trip. We might as well bring along Gleek, who can always use some time outside the house running around. Unfortunately what I really needed was a quiet afternoon where not much was required of me. I was worn out from un-bunking the boy’s beds and completely rearranging their bedroom (an action also sparked by emotional needs). Along with that massive effort was calling the orthodontist to commit to braces for Gleek, taking Link for his driver’s permit test, helping Kiki weather yet another head cold, fielding nine different communications from various schools regarding Valentine’s day*, realizing that I am going to miss parent teacher conferences at the high school tomorrow afternoon, and arranging for child transportation while I’m at LTUE. Yet to come are even more parenting task which lurk in the corners of my brain and will continue to do so until I can finally get them done. They are: massive reorganization of the boy’s closet so that things can be found when they are needed, cleaning the house for company, getting braces put on Gleek’s teeth, determining the progress and fate of Kiki’s wisdom teeth, having Kiki tested for allergies, a meeting with Link’s English teacher to make sure that everyone is clear about requirements, and supporting all the make up work because days where I don’t have a kid home sick have been fewer than those when I have.

My head was not exactly empty and an arcade is not exactly the sort of quiet place I prefer when I need to sort the contents of my brain. I wanted to be the drop-everything-and-play-with-the-kids mom. There were moments where I almost was her. Then I had to default into observer-mom mode, standing off to the side in a place I’d rather not be so that my kids could enjoy being there. Sadly this effort was paid for by crankiness later. At least I was able to aim my crankiness at a hapless bowl of spilled ramen rather than at any of the children.

Long day. I am tired now, which is why I’m doing my best to not listen to any of the voices in my head who are trying to give me parenting scores for today. I’ll be better able to evaluate after a full night’s sleep.

*I wish I were exaggerating about the number of Valentine’s emails, but I am not.
1 email from the Junior High asking parents to please not have Valentines sent to kids in class as it disrupts education.
3 emails of increasing urgency asking for volunteers for a medieval feast on Valentine’s day.
1 email stating that there are now enough volunteers, but donations of apple juice would be appreciated.
1 email saying they have enough juice now, thanks.
1 email asking for volunteers to help with either an activity or treats for a class Valentine’s party.
1 General email to all students at the elementary school that if they are going to bring valentines, they should bring one for every student in their class.
1 email to all high school parents asking that we not send gifts to students in their classrooms as it disrupts instructional time, also to remind us about parent teacher conferences.

I responded to none of these emails, because I’m at LTUE and unavailable to help with anything. Considering that school party planning is not my favorite thing, I’m not being able to dig up much regret except when I occasionally feel guilty that perhaps my kids would like me to be involved more.