Mixed Bag

That's how it's been around here lately. A mixed bag. Work is good. Work is frustrating at times. Life is good. Life is frustrating at times. That's how it goes.

Today has been an unusually quiet day. It almost feels like the day before a holiday weekend. My email box had a flurry of busyness in the morning but has pretty much stopped now. No interviews scheduled. No phone ringing. I was able to get caught up on marketing stuff, and am working on a larger project today. And watching the birds outside my window. With fall coming, the landscape at my feeder has changed considerably. Not just the species of birds showing up but also in the look of my regular birdie friends who will be around all winter. They are all puffed up and fuzzy in their winter feathers. A woodpecker has begun to show up at the feeder. It's beautiful. I'd never seen a woodpecker that close up before. The blue jay has returned, too. He is beautiful, and every time I see him, I think of an old friend, Terrie, who passed away from cancer. She was a birder and during a visit with me and another PA friend, a blue jay perched in a tree outside the window of the room we were in. Terrie had never seen a blue jay before and you could tell it was a highlight of her visit to the east coast.

Yesterday I made that always tough decision to part ways with a client. It was evident we were no longer on the same page, and an incredibly rude email sealed the deal that had been spinning in my head for a couple of weeks. I always get nervous about moving on, but each time I find that something better has come my way. And in fact, since sending that letter, I got two positive emails about potential work opportunities.

Now to get a little something done before happy hours arrives.

Helping Our Own

If I was working in an office today, I'd find an envelope on my chair with a note to please donate what I can to help a coworker in need.

Well, my "coworkers," my fellow writers, are spread throughout cyberspace. So if you haven't already seen this, please consider it the envelope on your chair.

Lori Hall Steel is a single mom battling ALS (Lou Gehrig's disease)and chronic Lyme disease, who faces the loss of her home to foreclosure within days because she's too sick to work. She has medical bills totaling more than $50,000, which may ultimately reach $120,000.

As a freelance writer Lori has published more than 3,000 articles for > local, regional and national publications. In September 2007 she > mysteriously lost the ability to move her feet. The paralysis later > spread to her legs and arms. Lori is now confined to a hospital bed > and is dependent upon a Bi-Pap breathing machine. Lori is only 44, and she is determined to fight this disease with all her strength.

You can learn more about Lori at http://www.hallsteele.blogspot.com.

If you care to donate to save Lori's house, or send a supportive > message or get any media publicity that might bring in more donations, please do so.

I finally decided

On my book for book group, that is. I went with Eat, Pray, Love. I'm not a huge fan of the book, to be honest, but I think it is one that would make an interesting discussion. If I know my group would do it, I'd love to compare and contrast the subject of the memoir with The Year of Magical Thinking. I found myself thinking a lot about how two people reacted to a major loss in their lives. Granted, one loss was a boyfriend relationship vs a multi-decade marriage coupled with another life-threatening situation, so I would expect one recovery to be much more difficult than the other. Yet, both authors did essentially the same thing: she hid from real life. But getting my group to read one book in six weeks is tough enough, let alone two!

The choice was well received and one person said she was going to choose it for her next book.

Now I have about 10 months to think of my next book, but I've got it narrowed down to 50 or so already!

Finding time for everything

I was joking with a writer friend that my work is doing well enough that it is starting to feel like a job.

When I worked full time in an office, it seemed like 95% of my day was dealing with busy work -- necessary busy work, of course. The busy work would take a few minutes to deal with, which on the surface seems like nothing, but those few minutes begin to add up: answering the phone, answering emails, putting out fires, running an errand down the hall, etc. By the time I wanted to settle into the larger tasks at hand, it would be 5 o'clock, and I'd either put them aside for the next day or bring them home to work on in the quiet time of the evening.

That's how my past few weeks have felt here, too. I'm not complaining, mind you. I love being busy and all the work challenges. But this week, my days have been spent loaded with interviews, answering phone calls about articles, sending and answering emails that needed to be addressed during work hours, and by the time I'm ready to sit down and write the article, it's 5:30 and my schedule needs to move on to other non-writing tasks on my calendar. Writing comes later at night, when the house is quiet again. I write best in the afternoon or the wee hours of the morning, which is a good thing because the wee hours of the morning seem to be the one time of day I'm not busy!

Today, however, I made my calendar totally empty in order to spend time with a family member who is visiting. He's running late, which is fine, because I'm able to get some other things done that have been pushed to the side of my desk. But I started thinking . . . it wasn't hard to clear off this afternoon. I simply said, "I am not available for interviews Thursday afternoon." And voila, my afternoon calendar has nary a mark on it.

So I started thinking. What's wrong with keeping one day a week empty of interviews so I can focus on other tasks, like spending a day solely on writing? Nothing. So that's what I'm going to do. I'm going to pick a day each week that will be my writing day.

What do you do to find balance for the busy work and the bigger tasks?

So much for the empty house

I found out today that the husband will be writing his thesis at home through the month of September. The same thesis he wants me to edit.

So much for the lovely empty house . . .

My Lovely Empty House

July and August were really crazy months here. My husband had surgery and was home for two weeks. My son was home from college and often had friends here in the middle of the afternoon after his work ended. The daughter came to visit with the beautiful grandbaby. And I was out of town a couple of times.

While I like having music in the background when I work, I don't like a lot of other noise, especially talking. I can't write when there is a lot of chatter happening. And with a house filled with people -- especially when the son's bedroom is right next to the office (I can see into his bedroom from my desk) -- it is difficult to get much done.

And my family likes to pop into my office to talk to me. Even when I shut the door, they pop in. I don't often shut the door for a variety of reasons, but when I do shut it, I always thought it was a signal to the family that they should not disturb me. Apparently, I've always been wrong in that assumption because they'll open the door and start a conversation. "You're busy? You should put a sign on the door, do not disturb!" they say. I'm thinking they'd ignore that, too.

But now? The husband has returned to his regular schedule. The daughter and the adorable grandbaby have ended their visit and are back on the west coast. The son moved to his dorm room last Saturday and has begun his fall semester.

The house belongs to me again. Well, the dog is here, but she mostly sleeps on the floor next to me and forces me into a little exercise when I have to let her outside. With this empty house, I can work in peace. I can interview without interruption. Heck, I can work naked if I wanted (but that might scare away the birds at the feeder outside my window).

Wait a sec. The husband sent me an email: I'm coming home to do a few chores over lunch. I'm sitting here in my office, fingers typing away on an important email, when he pops his head in my doorway. "Am I bothering you?"

Sigh.

Back in the Saddle Again

After a week off to enjoy my grandbaby, I'm back at work, trying to get back into a regular routine.

The time I took off wasn't all fun and games. I had a few quick deadlines to meet and some phone calls to return. Which I did when the baby was sleeping.

I didn't begin freelancing full time until my baby was a sophomore in high school. While I always worked on my writing, I didn't even start doing any real freelance marketing work until my kids were a little older -- maybe the youngest was in late elementary school -- and I wrote late at night when they were sleeping or during my lunch hour at work. I noticed how much easier my work life became when my youngest went off to college and he was no longer rushing into the house at 3:35 each day, full of conversation, often with several other teenaged boys. I'm an afternoon writer, and without fail, his arrivals were interrupting something. Even now, he's home for the summer and when he comes home from work or class, he stops in my office to chat. Makes no difference to him if I'm on the phone doing an interview or have my keyboard on my lap -- a sign that I am writing. When he's home, he wants to talk.

I don't know how anyone with young kids manages to get anything done.

Granted, when the grandbaby was here, it was temporary, and I wanted to spend time with him. But there were a few times I came into my office while I had some emails to check and he was occupied with food or his grandpa. Soon enough, he'd come toddling into my office, all smiles, wanting to pull out all the cables on my computer or open my filing cabinet drawers or sit on my lap to pound on the keyboard. He was a pleasant distraction, but it wore me out, constantly watching his every move.

Obviously, if I had a small child, I'd be operating much differently. My office set up would be kid friendly. I'd revamp my work schedule around naps or Blues Clues. I'd have a routine. But I also know how my grown up son is while I'm working. My hat goes off to those with young kids underfoot while you try to work.

Today, the baby is back in his own home, 3000 miles away. The husband is back in his office. The teenager is packing to move back to campus in two days. And it is now time for me to get back to tackling this growing work load on my desk. One of my editors wrote to ask me if I was ready to start working again today. For the most part, I'm glad to have a regular routine and things back to normal.

But I do miss that little blonde head popping in here with a grin a mile wide as he reaches for the computer. . . .