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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.

For the past five weeks I have had to be extremely focused. All of my energy and brain space had to be devoted to getting the XDM project completed on time while not completely neglecting the children. I did not stop thinking other thoughts, but when they occurred, I would shove them away. I can’t think about that right now. For me “shove away” is not the same thing as “dismiss” or “forget.” I’ve spent years training my brain to save ideas for me so that I can use them later. This is the stash from which I draw my blog entries and stories. So for the past five weeks I shoved my ideas away; rather like a child who cleans the room by shoving things in the closet and under the bed. Repeated iterations of this eventually fill the closet. Then things are shoved against the walls or into corners. The edges fill up and the space in the middle gets smaller and smaller.

Yesterday I shipped off the XDM files to the printer. I was done. I finally had time to think about things other than preparing for printing. Hmm. Didn’t there used to be more space than this inside my head? My brain was half full of idea fragments. But they had all been compacted together so tightly that I could not see any of them clearly. My first thought was to wade into the mess and muck it out. I do this by writing what I call a “brain dump” entry. That is when I just write the thoughts in my brain as they surface. Each one pours out my fingers and into the blog. Then I can just let them go. Sometimes braindumps are the ideal way to sort my thoughts, but they are not pretty. Rather than giving each idea full reign of a blog entry where I really explore it, I just shove a bunch of them into a single entry so that I can let them go. I feel like most of my entries of the past few weeks have been of this variety. I finally had time and space to really compose an entry, and I wanted it to be a good one.

So I poked at the jumbled mess of ideas. I was certain that in there somewhere were a dozen possible blog entries. But each time I tried to grab hold of an idea, all I could catch was a fragment. And if I did not grab fast, the fragment would disappear again into the mess. I realized that I had to wait for the ideas to emerge. I had to lurk, like a hunter, trusting that if I was quiet that the ideas would separate themselves from the mess and float across the middle of my brain. Then I could catch them. I catch them by quickly scribbling notes. Pinning them to the page allows me to see them and figure out where they belong. The difficult part is that waiting for thoughts can be boring. I’m bored. Let’s go read. Let’s turn on music. Let’s watch a show. I wonder if there is email. But if I follow the bored voice, I will scare the ideas back into hiding. Not only that, I will be adding to the mess of ideas already there. So I have to let myself be bored. I do the dishes, and fold laundry, and wipe counters, all with nothing but my own thoughts to entertain me. And as sure as carbonation bubbles form and rise to the surface of the soda, the ideas coalesce and percolate out where I can see them. You have time to think about me now. Then I catch them on paper.

After a morning of quiet tasks and catching thoughts, I now have notes for four blog entries of which this was one. I’ve also identified stray business tasks I need to take care of next week and written them down so I will not forget them again. I’ve even made some plans about writing and revising. As a side bonus, my house is cleaner too.

Today:
Kids off to school
Drop XDM cover off at Alphagraphics for a test print. This is the second attempted test print for the XDM cover, we’re having boxes appear around some of the images. Probably a problem introduced by the export process.
Gather all XDM proofreading notes
Enter all proofreading notes into InDesign file for book
Wait for computer to slowly export book to high resolution pdf
Wait while computer and printer to slowly communicate and print the pdf.
Accept delivery of XDM dummy book. So Pretty!
Wait while Howard flips through XDM print out.
Howard finds errors.
Field phone call from Alphagraphics. The Under New Management file they have for test printing is corrupt. They need a new one.
Welcome Patch home from school and usher him off to a birthday party.
Flip through XDM print out. Find more errors.
Enter fixes into InDesign file.
Wait for computer to slowly export the book to high res pdf.
Wait for computer and printer to slowly communicate and print the new pdf.
Decide to buy lunch.
Discover that van will not start.
Use Howard’s car to drive for food.
Welcome kids home from school.
Eat food.
Call Auto repair shop and towing company
Wait for computer to slowly export the UNM file for test printing.
Assist in loading van onto tow truck.
Wave goodbye to van and at least $150 for towing and diagnostics
Burn the UNM pdf to a CD.
Use Howard’s car to take the CD to Alphagraphics.
Pick up UNM and XDM cover test prints.
Discover that we have not yet solved the XDM cover issue.
Discover that the UNM cover still requires some fixes.
Fix UNM cover.
Wait for computer to slowly export the cover to a high res pdf file so I can do another test print.
Show Howard the cover test prints
Discover another problem with the UNM cover. This time it is Howard’s fix.
Howard and I hatch a plan to fix the XDM cover.
Write a blog while waiting for a big file to load in photoshop.

Up ahead:
Fixing the XDM cover (hopefully)
Feeding people dinner
putting kids to bed.

I’d hoped to ship files this afternoon. It is going to be mid-day tomorrow at the earliest. Once I get all the test prints approved, I still have to package the InDesign files and burn them to CD. This will mean even more waiting while my computer processes things. Whee.

I am in transition this week. There are a last few details to pull together for XDM, so I’m not completely done there. But I’m also starting to look ahead to May and realizing that I need to plan a book shipping event and a book launch party. I can see those things up ahead of me, but I’m not quite ready to really dive into them yet. I am also looking around my house and seeing all theneglected housework. I’m trying to find the motivation to catch up. I think it might be buried under the laundry, but I’m not sure. I’m also trying to muster the determination to make the kids do their homework again. And yet we’re already shifting into the run up to the end of school. The homework gets sporadic and there are many end-of-school activities.

Most of all I am transitioning between last week’s high intensity work into a more normal schedule. It feels…lazy. Because it feels lazy, I’m having a hard time remembering that I am not, in fact, on vacation. I still have work to do.

Tonight for a family activity we played hide-and-seek. By “we” I mean all six of us, Howard and I included. The game was Link’s pick. At first I was not all that thrilled about it, but standing in my first hiding place, trying not to breathe loud, my mind hearkened back to similar games from my childhood. It was very much the same. Standing there, listening to noises, trying to figure out if people are close, hoping they won’t see you because your hiding spot is too awesome, getting bored, being a little uncomfortable, deliberately making noise so that they’ll find you faster. That last bit was almost the best party. The rounds lasted about ten minutes because the kids had a hard time finding people. I would listen carefully for the sound of frustration and start making noises so that the kids had clues. The older the child, the fewer clues they needed. Even with me making noise, I was usually one of the last people found. It isn’t that my hiding places were amazing, it is just that I know how the kids think. I know which types of obstructions will render shoes or toys completely unfindable to them. All I had to do is hide in those places. Mom is good at hiding from kids. Mom is also very, very good at finding kids. They did not need to give me any hints. I found them all inside three minutes. Again, I know my house and I know my kids. Finding things is something I do daily. I’m good at it. I never realized before that hide-and-seek is an educational game. It teaches kids how to search methodically. Howard was also good at hiding and finding. The game was fun. Next time I think we ought to play sardines.

I’ve spent all day recovering from the two-week long working marathon. It is a little like waking up. I’m tired and not inclined to take on anything strenuous. Bit by bit I’m starting to open up parts of my brain that I had shut down so that they would not distract me from the hyper-focus I needed to get the XDM project done. Three weeks makes a habit and so many of these thought patterns are a bit rusty from four weeks of disuse. But now I am remembering the writing projects that were set aside. I am looking around my house and seeing the organization it needs. I am remembering that I like having friends and spending social time with them. These possibilities are opening up to me again. I’m remembering who I am when I’m not working 10-13 hour days.

This evening we got together with long-time friends who moved back into the area last year. It has been 8 years since we spent time with them regularly, but they are the kind of friends where we can easily pick up right where we left off. There was reminiscing, and new stories shared, and laughter had. A good time was had by all. We need to get together with them again. Once a year is far too seldom. It was a nice parallel to be reconnecting with friends on the same day when I’m reconnecting with myself.

Tomorrow there will be more work, but the work will not dominate the day. I will be back in balance and that will be nice.

I worked for 13 hours yesterday. Today I only worked 10 hours and then I had to stop. I had to stop because I ran out of things to do. You heard me right. The next task on the XDM list is paging through the book with Curtis and Tracy, which will happen at a meeting on Monday morning. For the first time in weeks I have time that I can use for leisure. I think I shall read. And sleep. And snuggle kids. I think anyone who works for 54 hours one week, and 63 hours the next week, is entitled to a lack of ambition for the following 36 hours.

By 7:25 this morning I realized that we were going to be late getting the kids off to school. Rather than upping the level of stress to try to hustle them out the door on time, I decided to embrace the lateness. We did not dawdle, but we did not scramble either. I even did two rounds of driving kids to school. Kiki and Link were each about 5 minutes late. Patch and Gleek were about 30 minutes late. I wrote notes to excuse the tardies. We can’t make a habit of it, but it was the right call for this morning.

Part of the reason for the lateness was the laundry crisis. We had reached a state where there were huge piles of clean clothes, but no one could find anything because all the baskets had overflowed into one another. We also had piles of dirty clothes and completely empty drawers and closets. Usually the kids do not pay much attention to laundry, but without me doing it, they have started to notice. Just yesterday Gleek lamented that she had no clean clothes because no one was doing laundry. Apparently they’ll eventually notice when the clean clothes stop magically appearing for them. I spent some time this morning segregating the laundry into the correct baskets. This afternoon I will require the kids to put their clothes away.

Also contributing to the lateness this morning was the urgent need for me to write notes to teachers about class placements for next year. The end of April is when those placement meetings are held. I long ago learned that the best way to get my kids placed where I think they need to be is to speak with the teacher just prior to the class placement meetings. I missed it last year. I didn’t want to miss it again. The notes have been written and delivered. It is good to be putting parenting stuff ahead of business stuff for one morning. But now I need to get to work.

Note: You know you’ve been doing too much editing when you say something and your brain supplies an image of where the commas should go into the sentence you just spoke.