Back and tired
May 8, 2009 work work work
I crashed hard today and now I know why the boss was pretty insistent that we take today off from work. I did a little bit of checking in and sending (press releases, mostly) but tried to stay away from the computer over all.
I really miss writing.
I’m having a hard time figuring out how to fit it in between home and work and I’m feeling depressed about it. It seems like lately my free time (like weekends) are taken up with not-quite-work things like the adoption conference and workshops to lead and tomorrow I’ve got a video chat thingie for the Mothering and Blogging book launch (I have an essay in the book). Then the kids have soccer and religious school and visits with extended family, etc. I’m tired and weepy and missing the time and motivation to get any writing done.
Things I wanted to write about:
- That one of the pleasures of watching Mandy and Patti sing was thinking on how delivering the same songs over and over and over could make you stale or could make you really understand every possible nuance of a song. And that made me think about what it might be like to take an incident and write it over and over and over as an exercise but formally (like for a blog) so that you’d be forced to write with purpose (and not just free write an incident over and over and over because this is what freewriting for an essay often is for me anyway). I might try that this week, especially since I’ve been too busy/exhausted to come up with blog fodder.
- How much I like people and getting to know people and how everyone has an interesting story just by default but how liking people and caring about random strangers is also what drives me to introversion. I was thinking on this after I talked to a self-described extrovert that doesn’t really like asking people questions because he says it’s boring and he doesn’t care. And that made me wonder if introversion — which I still think is a sensory issue — is about being sensitive to people i.e., caring about their thoughts/feelings/histories. I’m not sure about this but I was thinking on it a lot.
- Speaking of all this — I met 2.6 million people (or at least it felt like it) at the conference and seriously, nearly every single one was interesting if I got a minute to talk to them with one exception who shall remain nameless and faceless and better left unsaid. I wish I could walk around in other people’s shoes now and then because sometimes I can’t stand that I only get to be one person and live one life. I think this is why I like to read — I really wish I knew what it would be like to be other people. (This made me crazy when I was a kid; it felt so unfair to only get to be one person.)
- I’ve also recently become annoyed with myself because it seems like I have to do everything the hard way. The thing about being an idealist — and I certainly am one — is that it means you constantly feel like you’re failing. Pretty much I feel like I’m failing at just about everything. I’m not a perfectionist, mind you. I don’t care about getting something absolutely right, it’s just that I’m easily disappointed in myself and (frankly) with other people. I’m not reasonable. When I was bitching to a sympathetic Brett about my lack of time to write tonight, I realized that in my head it’s all or nothing. Either I slog my way into a nervous breakdown or I give it all up and live a life of quiet desperation. I’ve got to learn how to modulate my expectations and I don’t know if I can do that.
I’m really really really really hoping that with the conference being over that I can get back to a livable schedule. It just seems like the kids have needed SO MUCH lately and also that I’ve been doing a lousy job of being there. I hope that it’s the conference and the unbelievable amount of work leading up to it but right now it all seems insurmountable.
Tags: Blogging, boss, Brett, conference, introversion, Writing
Road trip tomorrow
Mar 31, 2009 The Story of My Life
I’m off again! Road tripping to this training and getting to see Kelly, who I haven’t seen in THREE YEARS even though we live in the exact same state. It’s supposed to rain tomorrow — thus my icon.
I will be road tripping with Frank who is one of my four favorite co-workers (I only have four co-workers) and the one I am most likely to quote at the dinner table to make Brett laugh. (It’s all in the delivery.) Frank kinda reminds me of Noah only he’s 26 years older and a whole lot taller. It’s not just the default to chicken strips when eating out — although that helps — it’s something else I can’t quite figure out. I just kinda bet Frank was a Noah-ish boy/ Anyway. Road trip.
I like the days off from work to go do work stuff except that it means coming back to more work because pretty much I need every little bit of working time I can get. We have a conference in early May that has us all scurrying around but every time I feel myself starting to panic I look around at my four favorite co-workers and watch ‘em just going with the flow and decide to follow their lead. After all, they’ve been through this all before and apparently last minute is just how these things operate.
So tomorrow’s road trip means that I will miss my husband, which is an especially sad thing seeing as how it’s our 15 year wedding anniversary (19 years together, which I think I should get to count since we moved in with each other RIGHT AWAY but Abby says, “We don’t celebrate harlotry, Dawn! Not in this country!” Crying shame if you ask me). Since Madison was born and came home on April 2nd, we have kind of flaked on celebrating our April Fool’s Day anniversary. We keep saying we’re going to renew our vows since we didn’t have a wedding and some of the family still feels sad about that but then something shiny catches our eye and we wander off and — oops! — then it’s fall and we totally forgot to plan it.
Maybe next year, right?
Tags: anniversary, Brett
Moving forward
Jan 3, 2009 work work work
Thanks to all who weighed in (on blog and off) about grad school. It’s kind of a moot point since I’m not in a position to go for a fellowship right now (because I still need to make money) and I wouldn’t go to grad school if I had to pay for it. But it’s a maybe someday kind of thing. Hearing that I may not need that degree to do what I want was encouraging. I know that if my book sells that this will go a long way to building my career, which is one reason I want to write it. I want to get to the next stage in my life as a writer and I feel like having a book is the next stage. I’m not thinking much beyond this proposal (because I want to revel in the experience of having one out) but I am thinking about what I can be doing to support that proposal (and my interest in adoption) and help me grow into other projects if that book doesn’t sell.
Here’s some stuff in my head right now:
- Brett’s doing the taxes and I made more than I thought last year. Although I was technically full-time freelance, I was really working part-time and I made a very nice income for a part-time worker. That made me feel much better about things. What hurt us was that when I went full-time in 2007, I wasn’t making enough at all and we ran through the cushion we’d built to support us while I got things up and running. Then when clients paid out late in 2008, we had no cushion and went into debt and I didn’t make enough to pay ourselves and pay back that debt so Brett had to go to work. But I was short by much less than I thought — we are not as bad off as I feared.
- I had coffee with Alicia who had encouragement and good advice about doing workshops. She knows whereof she speaks since she gave me my first workshop gig. I left our meeting more excited!
- In my continuing critique of the past year, I realized that all of my jobs came via networking. ALL OF THEM. None came from marketing/cold calling/warm calling. So I’m going to work on developing my connections and let word-of-mouth bring me work. In other words, I’m going to fret less and trust more (having Brett at work to pay the regular bills gives me the freedom to do this). And with the cushion that is Brett, I won’t take work that I don’t want this year.
- Some of last year’s mistakes were necessary so that I could figure out what I was doing, like joining too many networking groups because I bought into the “it’s a numbers game” message even though I don’t like networking. I’m good at relationships and I’ve done better by focusing on relationships and easing up on the glad-handing strangers. Lesson learned. Of course I had to spend a lot of money and time to find it out and because I’d invested so much money and time, it took me longer than it should. (I kept trying to make it work, going to lunches and brunches and coffees and spending a lot of money on business cards that I gave away and that only got me on other people’s pitch lists.)
I have not, by any stretch, closed shop. I’m still here slugging away but having Brett bring home a paycheck is giving me room to put to work what I learned in the past year.
I am very grateful to Brett. (I should probably tell him that.)
Now that 2008 is over, I will say cautiously that it was a good year, even the terrible last quarter. Because sometimes a person has to fall flat on her face to look back and see what was tripping her up.
I am feeling very hopeful.
(Seriously — having that number there in black and white and knowing that I earned it on my own, flying free has gone a long way to making me feel better about it all.)
Tags: Allyo, Brett, business, business cards, career, encouragement, freelance, income, jobs, marketing, money, networking, proposal, wordpress, Workshop, workshops
