Updates on Projects
The warehouse is cleared, pallets removed, boxes shifted. I’m almost ready for a shipment of books to arrive next week. I just need to shift a few more things and sweep the newly available space.
I’ve been working hard on Planet Mercenary. Much of what I’ve been doing is organizational. I took on half of the art director job, deciding what art we need done, contacting artists, and assigning work. It seems strange that spending so much time sending and responding to email counts as being productive, but it is necessary.
Work on the house remodel is on hold through the end of January. Both Howard and I need to keep our project energy firmly focused on Planet Mercenary.
Many of the parenting tasks are on hold this week. There are things we need to do in order to help all the people in our house have healthier lives, but we’re not pushing any of it forward during the space between Christmas and New Year’s Day. The new year is coming fast. I drive Kiki back to school on Monday, where she’ll hopefully have a calmer semester than the last one was. The other kids start back to school on Wednesday. It would feel like a fresh start, except that our school district doesn’t end the semester with Christmas break. Instead the end of the semester is a week and a half into the next year. So we always arrive back at school feeling muddled and rushed to get all the end of semester things done.
I don’t actually know how I feel about having a new year. This one was a muddled mess of things getting better on a personal level and feeling more perilous on the public stage. I don’t want to live in dread and fear, but I’m cautious about talking myself into hope and optimism. If things end up being hard, I don’t want to have to deal with cleaning up shards of shattered hope while I’m dealing with the hard. So mostly I’m putting my head down, trying to ignore the change over of the year, and put one foot ahead of the other on all my projects. Bit by bit they’ll all get done. Since all of them are specifically designed to make the world better (even if only in small personal ways) that step by step approach is a “Make the World Better” effort.