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Last night Howard and I had some friends over for dinner. They are also making a living on a creative endeavor and so we had a very interesting conversation on the particular challenges and joys of this lifestyle. One of the things discussed was the quantity of time that gets spent on work and work related things. I know Howard has to make a concerted effort to take breaks. His default mode is working on something. Our friends were relieved to hear that because they feel the same way. And we all agreed that we’re lucky to be able to make a living on work that we can’t leave alone.

Then, at a moment when Howard had wandered out of the room, the husband leaned forward and asked me a very interesting question. He asked “Do you mind that Howard is working all the time?” I hardly even had to think. I assured him that I did not. I’ve now had time to ponder that answer and it is accurate, but I don’t think it is complete.

Howard is a person who always has to be doing something. He literally can not stop. Early in our marriage that caused a few difficulties as we learned how to deal with each other. I learned that Howard can pay full attention to what I’m saying while he is also surfing the internet. He learned that sometimes I need him to turn away from the computer and give me his full attention. I learned to ask for his full attention when I need it. He learned that sometimes I really need attention, but am reluctant to ask. Over the years we have worked out how to manage these things.

Howard’s need to always be doing things is so core to his being that he’d have to become someone else to excise it. During the early years of our marriage that need was filled by writing music. Then it found expression in producing music. There was a short stint as a science fiction reviewer for the company that eventually became About.com. Then the job at Novell became more of a career path and much of the energy was absorbed there. Then of course came Schlock Mercenary.

My point here is that Howard is always pursuing some goal. I love that about him. I resonate with it because I am the same way. So the question “Do you mind that Howard is working all the time?” is kind of moot. There is no choice between “busy” and “not-busy.” He is always going to be busy, it is more a question of what will occupy him. I love Schlock Mercenary because I get to participate. I can read scripts and sometimes help shape them. I can talk plot points and character arcs. I can dive in and do editing for the books. There are things I can do to be part of his dream. And in return he saves some of his energy and time to help me in pursuit of mine. The time he spends busy, or away at conventions, are just the price we pay for the dream.

Interestingly I’ve been asked the opposite of this question as well. “How do you stand having Howard home all the time?” This one is usually asked by other stay-at-home women. They run the household all day while the husband is at work and then when he comes home the day shifts into a different mode. The husband-at-home mode is either play time or project time, but either way it represents a different agenda than exists during the rest of the day. There are tasks which are saved for when the husband is available and tasks which must be accomplished before he comes home. Husband-at-home time requires more communication and co-operation which can be frustrating.

What day-job people often do not realize is that even though Howard is still in the house, he is very much at work. He disappears into his office for hours and I don’t see him unless I specifically need something from him. I run my things and he runs his, the only difference is that we bump into each other several times and exchange status reports. I still have tasks that require Howard to be available, they just aren’t lumped into a single block of time. Ditto with the tasks which must be done when he’s not around. Over the years we’ve developed a good working relationship and a whole pile of unwritten rules that make it all work.

I love having Howard work from home. I also understand his need to get out and socialize when he draws at Dragon’s Keep. I love the way that business and family curl around each other. Sometimes I am frustrated by the way that business and family get tangled up.

I think that what both of these questions tell me is that our way of life is out of the ordinary. Funny, to me it just feels normal.

Tomorrow morning at 7:45 Kiki will board the bus for her first day at Junior High. This is the 7th grade orientation day provided to give the new kids a chance to figure things out without 8th and 9th graders around. She claims not to be nervous. This is a good thing. I am nervous. I can tell because I keep wanting to corner Kiki and have talks about teasing and peer pressure and such. I’m restraining myself. I doubt she’ll encounter the worst that junior high has to offer on her first day there. There will be time to cover these subjects later. In fact, we’ve already covered most of these topics before. Me cornering her today will only pass my nervousness on to her without increasing her share of useful information. I need to let her be excited and cheerful. She’s either equipped to handle whatever Junior High throws her way, or she isn’t. I think she’ll be fine. She’s smart and pretty and confident. The winds of peer pressure seem to blow right over her without touching her in the slightest.

Tuesday morning at 8:00 Gleek will walk into her first grade classroom. At the same time Link will walk into his 4th grade classroom. 1st and 4th are both transition grades. The adjustments here are bigger. I think they are both ready. I think it will go well. A week from Tuesday at 9:30 Patches will be off for his first day of preschool.

All of my kids are setting out on voyages that they are variously prepared for. I hope none of them hit stormy weather before they get a chance to start sailing.

I’ve spent all day battling Entropy and Chaos by cleaning my house. Such a forward momentum assault always feels satisfying because Entropy and Chaos aren’t very confrontational. So I press forward and make a portion of my realm sparkle and shine. Then I turn and discover that while I was busy here, Entropy and Chaos have been hard at work over there. They aren’t much for confrontation, but they’re great at siege.

I’ve made some headway. I’m at least partially prepared for the onset of school next week. I’m not sure why the house has to be clean for me to feel prepared for school, but it does. Perhaps it is that the visual clutter is a constant reminder of things not-yet-done and thus creates mental clutter.

I’ve been working hard and have made several trips to the garbage can. It makes me really happy to throw bags of stuff away. Each bag of stuff in the garbage represents a bag of stuff that I’ll never have to clean up or take care of again. Items that are still usable get donated to a thrift store. Thrift store donation makes me even happier because I get the additional pleasure of knowing that something I donate may be helpful to someone else.

As much as I enjoy getting rid of stuff, you’d think my house would be less cluttered. Sigh.

I’m not such a big fan of scrubbing. I don’t mind doing the actual work, but it takes me so long to get around to it, that the job becomes huge. The bigger the job gets, the longer it takes me to get to it. It is a vicious circle. As a result nothing is ever as clean as I’d like it to be.

Break time is over. Back to battle with me.

Our plan is to have the layout work for the next Schlock book done by August 31st. That is two weeks from today. Crunch time.

Next week school begins. I’ve got to figure out how the days are going to run and to get back to managing homework and bedtimes. We all have to be getting up earlier, going to bed earlier, eating healthier. I also have to figure in the after school activities which are also starting up. This probably won’t feel settled for two weeks.

The observant will notice that the two weeks of supposed schedule settling, overlap the two weeks of schedule disrupting crunch time.

Add into the mix some financial stress, and a need to tighten up the budget, just to liven things up.

In the background looming are a couple of conventions, the chaos of book shipping, holiday book shipping, and the various holidays and birthdays themselves.

Today was the day of “trying to wrap my head around the new school schedule that begins next week.” Last night was the night of “nearly hyperventalating in panic at the thought of all the things that our family needs to accomplish in the next 9 months.” Fortunately it occured to me that in order to get everything done I just need to put everything on the calendar and worry about it when I get there. Now is not the time to be fretting over shipping books. Now is the time to be making sure that there is a book to ship. So I decided that I’m not allowed to stress over anything beyond September 30. One month’s worth of things is plenty.

Tomorrow I’ll be going school shopping. Last year I was very smug in the fact that I didn’t have to do any school shopping because I’d been keeping track of clothing inventories and planning ahead by going to the thrift store. This year I forgot to plan ahead. Now I’m wondering why I didn’t do some of this back in June when I was fretting over having a long summer full of nothing. Whatever the reason I didn’t get it done and tomorrow I must shop. I’ll be starting at the thrift store because money is tight again. It does that when we go a whole year without releasing a new book.

School starts on Tuesday. I have many things to do to get ready.

This morning was Patches’ preschool open house. I told him it was coming first thing this morning. He got himself dressed all the way to socks, but then told me he would put on his shoes when it was time to go. We then had a series of conversations. They were all really short, just a quick exchange in between other things. During these conversations Patches determined that he would be getting a special bag just for preschool. He planned that he would keep it all year and then give it back at the end. I told him that he got to keep the bag after Preschool was over. He liked that. Then he commented that 4-year-olds go to preschool, but 5-year-olds can go to preschool and regular school. But he will only go to regular school after he is done with preschool. Then he talked about how I will stay with him at the Open House today, but that on the first day of preschool he will stay and I will say goodbye. Then Patches talked about how his best friend will be in his class. Then we talked about how there will be some play time and some class time. There were half a dozen more topics that we covered.

When we arrived at the Preschool, the room was full of people, most of them adults. Patches was unprepared for that and hung back. But only a little coaxing got him to pick out his school bag. Then one of the teachers gave him a cookie and that was the end of nervousness. He played happily for the rest of the time.

As we left the Preschool, Patches again covered several of the topics that we’d discussed before. I realized that Patches was pre-planning in the same way that I do. He was rehearsing ahead of time so that he knew how to act when Preschool day arrived. I listened to this and realized that this must be how I was as a child. I was neither Jump-right-in Gleek, nor hang-back-afraid Link. I was think-it-through-in-advance Patches. These are only descriptions of tendencies. All of my kids have fearful moments and they all have plan-ahead moments. It is good for me to see the tendencies as what they are so that I don’t have to worry too much about them.

I’ve mentioned before that Link is a very anxious person. I was worried for awhile that he might be headed for an anxiety disorder. Then a friend pointed out to me that the definition of a “disorder” is when the behavior interferes with other things that you want to do. Link frequently feels fearful about things, but doesn’t have difficulty over-riding that fear if there is something he really wants to do. Then last week I talked to Link’s cub scout leader. The only difference she saw between Link and the other boys is that Link approaches new things with fear and caution, while the others feel excitement and interest. Link learns to do things in spite of his fear and grows into the excitement. The other boys are often so excited that they have mishaps and have to learn some healthy caution. It was an interesting and relieving way to look at Link.

This week I also had some time to examine my own thinking. I realized that I also approach new things with caution. My caution does not manifest as fear, it manifests as pre-planning. When I know a new thing is coming, I form multiple contingency plans to deal with it. I pre-plan everything from conversations to road trips to book mailings. Sometimes the pre-planning is as simple as forming an opening sentence while I’m dialing the doctor’s office. Other times the pre-planning is as complicated as printing bazoodles of maps and putting together a book of them for an outing. Somehow all the pre-planning hems the new experiences in and makes them feel safer.

I had not noticed this tendency about myself because I spend the majority of my time going places I’ve gone before and doing things I’ve already done. The only pre-planning that I need for a grocery trip is a list of things to buy because I know exactly where I’m going and how it will all work. Most of my conversations are with people I’ve talked to before. I’ve lived in the same house for 9 years and have developed a very happy comfort zone. Only lately I’ve begun branching outside that zone. I’ve begun doing more new things. And as I face these new things I enter I heightened state of readiness. I am tenser, more alert, more ready to respond should a crisis present itself. I am anxious. I am like my son.

Interestingly, I was not a fearful child. I was more like Gleek whose first question is whether or not she can get there in one jump. But at some point I learned that actions have consequences and if I want to ensure good outcomes, I have to plan ahead. So in that way I am not like my son, but I’ve arrived in a similar place. Link is younger and hasn’t developed the tool of pre-planning to keep fear at bay. Perhaps he needs an entirely different tool, but I intend to make sure he acquires whatever tools he needs.

Identifying my pre-event planning as mild anxiety does a lot to explain the post-event-emotional-mess phenomenon that I’ve experienced. It is me coming down off of an extended adrenaline burn. It also explains the mid-convention nadir. I just can’t keep the adrenaline up for multiple days without having an emotional crash somewhere.

I don’t think this realization changes my behavior any, but it does explain me to myself. It also helps me see that Link is doing just fine and perhaps I need to spend a little less time anxious on his behalf.

When I was in school I always cringed when a teacher handed out an assignment that required working in groups. There are a few exceptions to this, but I still frequently feel that way when I’ve got a group project. I just figured out why. The needs of the project often conflict with the social needs of the group.

I am a project oriented person. I very quickly get a handle on a new project and have a clear picture of how things need to proceed to make the project a success. If I am in a position of control or leadership, I can just start handing out assignments to make sure that the project gets done right. That is one of the situations where I can enjoy a group project. Alternately I can enjoy group projects when I am very clearly not in charge and the project is being handled well. Then I am content to fulfill the smaller assignments. But sometimes I am not clearly in charge and the project is being mishandled. Then I have to weigh my need to not damage the social relationships within the group with my need to see the project done well.

When I was in school the issue was to not alienate my peers by seeming too smart or too controlling. Also I needed to not alienate my peers by leaning on them too hard to get their parts of the project done. It was a tricky balance at best. As I’ve grown the social relationships have grown a little more subtle, but the essense is the same. The more important the project, and the more important the relationships, then the higher my stress levels will be.

I almost always choose maintaining relationships over completion of projects.