Organization

Things I am Stressed About

By / August 4, 2012 / 1 Comment

I have decided that rather than letting all these thoughts swirl around in my head, I will pin them to a list. Once I make them hold still I have a better chance of figuring out which ones actually need my attention.

Gleek goes to camp next week. This will be her first away from home, away from family experience. I’m sure she’ll have a fantastic time and that all will go well, but it hasn’t gone well yet. My brain keeps worrying over Things Which Could Go Wrong much in the way that a dog will worry at a favorite chew toy.

Kiki has not yet finished her big summer commission. She is completely capable of doing it. It is her job. She is handling it responsibly and making steady progress. She is going to get this done on schedule. Yet my brain can’t stop tracking the progress and noting that it is not yet complete.

School is coming. I don’t know how the onset of school is going to unsettle everyone. I’m gathering my mental energy to try to launch us into the new school year, but it is not launch time yet. So that pent up energy keeps getting funneled into “preparing for school” which probably doesn’t need that much focused energy.

Money. The finances are actually fine. Before the end of the month we’ll have sales from two large conventions. However we’ll also have bills attached to those conventions. My brain keeps trying to reach out and do future math to balance estimated sales against probable bills. The truth is that my inner financial squirrel is never happy unless she has enough money stashed away to pay all of the incoming bills for the entire rest of the year.

Laundry.

Gardening. I thought I’d do a better job of getting outside regularly to keep my few flower beds under control. Instead they’re currently overgrown and weedy. This makes me alternately sad and grouchy.

Organization in various stages of completion. I’m still in process on a lot of organizational tasks. Unfortunately this means that I have boxes or objects stacked in odd corners around my house waiting for me to find the time to send them to their final destinations.

Cleaning. I did lots of cleaning in the past few weeks. Unfortunately the new cleanliness of some areas makes me see the mess in other areas. I keep seeing it and I keep not getting around to getting it done.

Writing. For the most part my writing brain is locked down so tight I can’t even see what is in there. I keep feeling like I ought to be opening it up. I ought to be airing out those thoughts and starting to mentally prepare for the writing retreat at the end of September. But digging into that tight knot feels difficult and scary. I’m afraid that it will be pandoras box, filled with all sorts of emotional stuff that I’ll have to dodge, manage, or internalize.

My brain continues to spin trying to convince me that I chose wrong in deciding to go to the retreat.

Link has turned another developmental corner. He and I spent over an hour last night talking about friends and friendship. Link is beginning to learn that the shape of his childhood friendships is no longer enough. He needs friends he can talk to about grown up things, but he is only just learning how to do that. I’m completely confident that he will work this out and find his people. He may even discover that many of his childhood friends are his people. But the process is going to be difficult and I can’t make it any easier. I just get to watch, throw out advice where he can grab it if he wants, and then wait for him to sort it out himself.

I need to go to the doctor for another thyroid check up. I don’t want to have to deal with it. I just want to find medical stability and hide there for awhile. I want a month where no one has illnesses or pain. I want a month without an excess of psychology to navigate. I want calm, order, and work done.

Food. Why can’t healthy food just materialize in front of me without me having to think it up and perform the work necessary to bring it into being?

Next week I’m expecting four hundred pounds of t shirts. I’m going to have to turn around and ship about half of those out to customers. So next week is a big shipping week. The GenCon shipments are all done, but World Con shipments also need to go out asap. I keep kicking myself for not getting the WorldCon shipping done last Monday when I meant to do it. All week long a piece of my brain has been berating me for not getting it done.

There is probably more, but I’ve got children hovering and asking what I’m going to make for dinner.

Things Done and the Sound of Crickets

By / July 26, 2012 / 1 Comment

There is a chorus of crickets outside my window. I like them much better than the nest of hornets next to my front door. The crickets can stay. I’m trying to figure out how to eradicate the hornets since they’ve burrowed under the front porch in a way that I can’t spray the nest. I shall have to get creative tomorrow.

When I was not pondering hornets, I spent time cleaning my house and planning for GenCon. This first of the summer conventions hits in only three weeks. It seems like a long time, unless I need to ship merchandise inexpensively and have it arrived before the convention does. So this is my week of thinking ahead. While I have my thoughts wrapped around convention planning, I’ve also put some thought into WorldCon, which has different, but similar, requirements. I’ve got a list of people to contact and things to ship.

In many ways today was one long exercise in avoidance. The secret to getting a lot done is to have something else that I don’t want to do. I didn’t want to think about summer conventions, so I cleaned and focused on the guests in my house. But then I got tired of cleaning, so spent time contemplating hornets. Then it was time to make dinner, and in order to do that, my brain snapped into business gear and I planned all sorts of things about the upcoming summer conventions. Fortunately my sister made dinner while I was busy, so it was all good.

Now I’m sitting here in the evening with a long list of house cleaning chores, business tasks, and social plans, all of which I somehow think will fit into tomorrow. It won’t, but while I listen to the pleasant chirp of the crickets, I can imagine that it will fit. And the truth is that enough of it will fit that things will be fine. So I close my eyes and listen to the crickets.

Pulling Things Out of the Closet

By / July 25, 2012 / 1 Comment

Little things can make a world of difference. I have been frustrated with my closet for years. The shoes were always in a jumble at the bottom. I thought about getting a shoe rack, but if my shoes took up vertical space, they would interfere with hanging space for shirts. So I kept having to rummage in the bottom of my closet any time I wanted to wear a pair of shoes that had been out of use for awhile. It was only a little bit frustrating, but a little bit of frustration each time begins to accumulate. A couple of weeks ago I was again rummaging for shoes and I felt sad that the rummage process sometimes squashed some of my more attractive shoes. In fact I’d taken to leaving my prettiest shoes in their shoe boxes to protect them. Except that exacerbated the rummage problem. This was when the light went on in my head. I have pretty shoes. They are intended to be decorative. They can be decorative even when I am not wearing them on my feet. I bought a simple shoe rack and put it out where my pretty shoes could make my room feel nicer. It worked. Every time I walked into the room and saw my pretty shoes lined up on their rack, I had a small happiness in my day instead of a small frustration. This week I’ve been doing lots of organizing and I realized that I’ve been hiding away other pretty clothing items which could be decorating my room. I’ve now fixed this.

My scarves and shawls look lovely hanging next to the shoes. The hooks are just adhesive hooks. They don’t damage the dresser at all. Even better, it only took me fifteen minutes combined to assemble the shoe rack and put up the hooks. My work shoes and snow boots still lurk in my closet, but I don’t mind if they get jumbled around.

I also pulled out my earrings where they can be admired.

To hang my earrings, I just used hot glue to affix a fabric mesh into a picture frame. Perhaps later I’ll find a prettier frame, but this works for now.

The hooks for Howard’s hats are not quite working yet, but it still gets them out of the closet and looks better than the jumble which used to adorn the top of the dresser. This picture does not do justice to the lovely warm brown of the top hat.

Bit by bit I am making my house a place full of small beauties and happinesses rather than small frustrations.

Managing the Summer Schedule

By / July 7, 2012

The plan was to be getting everyone out of bed by 8 am because sleeping late in the summer causes us all to sleep through some of the best work hours of the day. Except the best outdoor hours of the day are 8-10 pm. Those are the cut-the-lawn, work-in-the-garden, go-ride-bikes hours. If we’re outside until 10 pm, then the younger kids don’t go to bed until 11 and the older kids until midnight. Seventeen years of mommy radar training makes it very difficult for me to fall asleep while kids are still rattling around the house, even when those kids are teenagers. I get to bed around 1 am. This makes getting up at 8 am…unlikely. We can do it. I make efforts, but when I do get up early, the house is so lovely and quiet. “I can get work done in peace!” I think to myself. So I do. Then I hear kids rummaging in the kitchen for breakfast and realize that once again it is 10:30 am. The pattern is more or less working, but all my roles run into each other. Also, I’m not getting enough sleep, not even on the days when I catch an afternoon nap. The lack of sleep further erodes my ability to compartmentalize my roles. My life feels much nicer when each day clearly divided in to mom focused time, work focused time, house focused time, and relaxation time. In summer those things all dissolve into each other so that I always feel like something is getting neglected. The best I can do is declare “house stuff comes first today” and then plan for a more work focused day later. The good news is that all of the critical tasks are being accomplished even though everything feels like a big muddle.

Things will change (again) tomorrow evening when Niece7 and Nephew5 come to stay with me for five days. Those number designators are ages, and no their parents aren’t going to be here. I’m re-entering the world of 24 hour preschool child care. Yes I expect it to make just about everything harder. I’ve planned for that, but my sister is moving so I’m watching her kids. Then there is a family reunion, and then a different sister is coming to stay with her kids. The family part of my brain is very happy and excited. The business side of my brain worries a bit, particularly about the next week, because I’ve got to get books shipped off to GenCon soon.

I write all this out, and it feels like I’m repeating myself. Which I am. Because I face similar challenges every summer. Part of my brain feels like I should have figured this out by now. Surely it is a solvable problem. Yet the best I can manage is a solution that feels like muddling through.

Casting the Bones: Shipping Inventory to Summer Conventions

By / July 9, 2012

The process for deciding how much inventory to ship to a convention is very involved and always stressful.

Step 1: Look at numbers from last year
We’ve been in this business long enough that we have several years of prior numbers to consult. This is particularly true in the case of GenCon where I can look up how much we sold last year and the year before. Our GenCon team is amazing and keeps wonderful track for us. Yet looking at those inventory numbers shows me all the flaws in my convention inventory management systems. Without fail there is some number I want which is missing. This time it was magnet sales not being itemized out from other things. I know I had them itemized at some point, but I must have made a data entry error in my accounting software. Either that or I was tired and instead of looking up the specific number, rolled it into an additional book sale. This means that last year’s numbers over count on a book or two to account for the magnet money. Little bits of fudging on small ticket categories happens every time. Usually it reveals a flaw in my system rather than any fault of those who are on the ground running the booth. More often all the numbers line up perfectly the week after the convention, but then I fail to record them because I am tired and distracted. Or sometimes I record them and then file the record in an odd place. So the seemingly simple task of looking at numbers from last year gets time consuming.

Step 1b: Look up numbers from comparable conventions
WorldCon changes locations every year. The inventory sold numbers from the previous year are kind of useful, but only as a rough guideline because attendance varies. Also our sales vary depending upon whether the location of WorldCon is in a place with a strong Schlock Mercenary fan base. Reno was nearly home turf, Australia was largely new territory and in a foreign country. How much do I use those numbers as guidelines? Or would I do better to use numbers from another convention and multiply by number of attendees? I rarely know the answers, so I usually look up several sets of numbers to have them on hand.

Step 2: Adjust for new releases, cross promotion, and other factors
GenCon has a host of new factors this year. Our booth mates both have big new releases this year. We have our shiny new board game. Also Brandon and Mary will both be at GenCon doing Writing Excuses things with Howard. All of these factors will, in theory, drive additional traffic to the booth and thus lead to more sales. This leads me to round up on the inventory numbers. Also we have an established team and a place to store excess inventory, both very good things. But perhaps there is some other extremely shiny thing that will drive traffic and dollars in a different direction. It seems like WorldCon Chicago is completely made of factors for which I should adjust the numbers. Mary will be there and the convention is writer heavy, so more WE stuff should go. Except Brandon will be at Dragon Con and Dan will be in Germany. Usually we have them sign at our booth, thus luring in new people. We have a fantastic team, but perhaps most of the WorldCon regulars have already bought their Schlock books. I turn all of these things over (and over and over) in my head before moving on to step 3.

Step 3: Make a guess
This is when I write down how much stuff I need to send. It really feels like stabbing in the dark, though I can be reasonably sure I’m in the right vicinity. If I send too much, I’ll have to pay for shipping both ways. If we run out of something, we’ll disappoint someone who wanted to buy.

Step 4: Ship the stuff and fret
All the time I’m packaging and shipping I will worry that I’m sending too much. I particularly worry this when I look at the shipping bill. Once I’ve sent it, and during the booth set up process, I am always convinced that I didn’t send enough. Sometimes I will oscillate between too much and not enough at a rate of 10 minutes per oscillation.

Step 5: The convention
Things sell. We pay the bills for the show. Usually we end up in the black. We make a huge mental list of what we should do differently next time. Sometimes I remember to write down the list or parts of it. Sometimes I even keep track of the notes and file them where I can find them next year.

Step 6: Post Convention accounting
This is when all of the stuff comes back home to me. In theory I conscientiously count everything and make copious notes. I’m also supposed to write up a post convention report which includes all those mental notes. The notes and reports go into a file neatly labelled for next year. All the convention gear should be neatly put away in places where I can find it again. Perhaps this year most of those things will happen because I’ll be staying home and thus not convention exhausted during this phase. In past years the boxes, reports, and gear get shoved out of the way as I scramble to recover and handle other things. Then a month or so later I finally get around to cleaning it all up, by which time some of the thoughts and pieces have been moved or lost. I do muddle through, I do at least shove the relevant information into file folders so I can find it the next year. I have folders full of GenCon papers for the past four years. I have WorldCon papers for a similar length of time. If I at least shove all the papers into a single location, I have a hope of making sense out of it later when I need to.

It always feels messy. I always feel like I’m doing it wrong. Yet I don’t think I am. I think the guessing and mess are part of the nature of the work. Which is why I write this blog post to let everyone know when I make jokes about casting the bones to guess how much to send to summer conventions, I’m only partially joking. Its how it feels.

I Have a Library

By / July 2, 2012 / 4 Comments

Some dreams shine brightly right in front of our eyes. They are the big shiny possibilities which pull us forward and cause us to despair because they are so far beyond our reach. Other dreams are quiet. They exist in the backs of our brains and we pay them no attention until that moment when they either come true and bring us unexpected joy or become forever unavailable and bring us unforeseen grief. Quiet dreams matter. They are the difference between a joyful life and one spent in hollow pursuit of the shiny, unreachable dreams. This past year I’ve been working to identify and fulfill some of my quiet dreams. I started by giving myself permission to want things, even things I knew I’d never have. Then to my surprise, I found that many of the wants which emerged were very easy to fill, and once they were, they significantly added to my daily happiness. One of the quiet dreams that emerged was a desire for a library.

I’ve always had books in my life, lots of books. They lived more-or-less on shelves, though most of them spent significant amounts of time in stacks or piles. Some of the piles became semi-permanent installations in various corners of the house. They were like flotsam in the eddy of a flowing stream, places where books gathered because people set them down there. I made periodic attempts to clear out the piles as they became messy. I’d stack books on shelves two deep, because there weren’t enough shelves. Occasionally I would sigh to myself and wish for more shelves. Sometimes I would get desperate enough to buy an additional small book case and find a corner where I could shove it. Then it too would become home to stacks of books. Thus books accumulated in all the corners of our house and our lives.

When I stood in my office and pictured knocking out a wall, the world opened up with new possibilities. I could have guest space, a craft desk, and finally enough shelves to house all the books. It was the fulfillment of half a dozen quiet dreams, things I’d been doing with out for a very long time. The office was completed last May. I finally installed the shelves this week. I pulled the books from their boxes and placed them on the shelves. The shelves began to fill and something magic happened. I didn’t just have shelves of books, they transformed into a library. There was space to sort by size and type. I could put all the kid friendly books in easy child reach, while placing other books up high. All the anthologies could go together. This type of sorting was not possible with books stacked and piled all over the house. Then I remembered, I used to do this. As a child, I sorted my books. I’d learned about the dewey decimal system in school and tried to create a numbering system of my own. Some of my childhood favorites still have giant numbers scrawled inside the front covers or taped to the spines. For a while I used unicorn book plates.

The numbers were for the checkout system I had devised to track who had borrowed my books. I revised my system multiple times over the years as various systems fell apart. I’m not sure that anyone ever checked out a book from me, but the organizing and planning made me happy. Much of my discretionary money went into book purchases. I wanted to own every Black Stallion book. Even as a teenager I made list of books I wanted to own someday. I’ve been an amateur librarian all my life without realizing it. And now I have a library.

This makes me incredibly happy. Our book purchasing habits have changed. More of our books will be electronic than mass market paperback, but the hardbacks are going to continue to accumulate. My kids are acquiring manga at a frightening rate. Some of these books will be passed along to make space for new ones. But even though the contents of the library will evolve, I find it wonderful that we are able to set aside this small corner of my house and put books there first. The existence of this space declares that stories matter, that they deserve a space of their own. And there is a comfy couch right there so that people can sit down to read. It is a beautiful thing.

Summer Chaos and Brave

By / June 23, 2012 / 1 Comment

I’m the first one awake most mornings. I’m the last one to bed at night. Since it is summer, those bedtimes are later than usual. I rarely get my younger two off to sleep before 10 pm. Later if it happens to be one of the nights when our cul de sac fills up with kids playing night games, which happens every other night. Some days I get a nap in the afternoon. Most days I don’t. Usually the days have long stretches of time when I can focus on work or projects. Yet randomly a quarrel will break out, and I am the one who has to drop everything I’m doing to go create peace again. None of this is so exhausting as it used to be. As they mature, my kids are more able to help themselves and solve their own problems. It is just that everyone is here all the time and we all depend upon me to create the structure of our lives. I do it because it is important, because I crave the order as much as anyone else. This balance we’ve arrived at does seem to be the best solution currently available given the constraints of summer schedule and business requirements.

All of the above is what I took with me when I went to see the movie Brave. I wanted to love the movie, instead I only liked it because it prodded me right in my emotional baggage. You see, I want to be Merida, wild and free. I want to jump on the back of my horse and gallop through the forest shooting arrows and climbing waterfalls. I even want that glorious, untameable red hair. Instead I am Eleanor, the mother, the one who quells the fun and imposes order. I was very frustrated that Eleanor kept imposing princess behavior on Merida which seemed completely unvalued by anyone else in the society. It is one thing for a mother to insist her child learn something because it will definitely benefit the child later. This just seemed pointless. The movie was telling me that it is the job of adult women to impose civilization. “You must be Eleanor.” The movie seemed to say to me. “Be the embodiment of constraint.”

In after thought, I remember that there were portions of the movie where Eleanor also seemed trapped by her own expectations. At the end of the film Eleanor also gets to ride a horse. Lessons are learned all around, I suppose.

Each day I see all the things that are necessary. I see why they are necessary. I see how things must be done in order to achieve long term growth and goals. But the practical application of all of that leaves me being the one to impose order and structure on chaos and requiring others to help me. Part of me loves doing these things. I like order and calmness. I like my hair smooth while I create something of beauty with a needle and thread. Yet I also want to run through the woods with leaves caught in my wild hair. I think I need to see Brave again and view it while considering Merida and Eleanor as two possible aspects rather than feeling I must be one or the other.

Settling in for the Summer

By / June 20, 2012

A good routine flows naturally. I currently have all the pieces of a good summer routine, but I’ve yet to actually apply it for more than a few days in a row. In theory today was the first in a long run of days which will be run by the summer routine. It went pretty well, but not perfectly. The kids were easily distracted from their summer chores. I was easily distracted by internet things. I also struggled a bit with prioritization. Many tasks were set aside during shipping and now I need to catch up on them all. I had to figure out which tasks had become urgent, which could stay on the back burner, which things were making life feel out of kilter, and which things were tasks I’d assigned to myself unnecessarily. So far so good.

I think that the next couple of days I’m going to run primarily by instinct rather than list. When things are crazy busy my lists save me. However there are also times when the lists become a narrow focus and prevent me from seeing what really matters. I’ll still be busy all day long. I’ll still get lots of things done, but it feels different in my head.

Tweet Catch Up: Shipping Week Continues

By / June 10, 2012

Wednesday June 6:

Awake. Time to ship more books. The remaining unsketched books are headed out today. Howard is drawing Armored Kevyn.

If you ordered an unsketched SEOS, your book is in the mail. Mailing of sketched books begins tomorrow with Elf and Armored Kevyn. #presents

Thursday June 7:

If you ordered Armored Kevyn or Elf as your SEOS sketch, then your package is in this pile.

Just realized that all of my twitter photos are pictures of packages. This must be fixed. Have a tree at sunset.

Friday June 8:

Artist Choice, Kevyn, Schlock, and Tagon are all packaged. The little white bag contains two donuts for our postman.

We have the best postman in the world. He’s actually happy to see our pile of packages, because he likes his job.

Saturday June 9:

First tweet reports of books received have reanimated my languishing motivation. Off to the storage unit for more shipping supplies.

No packages shipped today. Needed a rest and to allow sketching time. The remaining packages will all go out on Monday.

Non Tweet thoughts:

Yesterday was a day much full of sleep and watching screens. I did print out the last odds and ends of postage. Tomorrow morning we’ll package up everything and set it out for pick up. Then I can dial my shipping brain back down to maintenance mode.

This process reminds me once again that we have much to be grateful for. I never put out a call for volunteers. Usually I do, because we’re hosting a big book shipping event, and I know that there is an emotional reward in being part of a big event. Also I can promise pizza. Somehow the new method, shipping out of our house, felt different. Asking for volunteers felt more like “come do my work for me” and less like “come be part of our fun event.” So I didn’t breathe a word about needing volunteers, but half a dozen people emailed me asking if they could help. They didn’t mind when my answers were tentative. They scheduled time off work or babysitting in order to come. Several of them arrived with treats. Then they worked with energy and enthusiasm. The lift to my spirits was as important as putting books into boxes. This has been a very long week. My whole body is sore from hefting boxes. My fingers are raw from folding boxes and taping them. Howard’s hand, arm, and back are exhausted. But we do what we must because each sketch and each package represents a commitment to someone who supports us. We work fast because deadlines loom and we must clear our work spaces for the next big project. Having friends come to help, Janci every shipping day, volunteers for a day each, makes a huge difference. One more day. I can do one more day.

On Friday one of our volunteers asked if this new method of shipping is working better than the old one. On the whole, yes it is. New challenges are introduced, but the worst of them are a result of the shipping week being sandwiched between two convention trips. We’ll try not to do that again. Howard needs a full week of sketching time before I start scheduling shipping days. This time Howard was frantically trying to get things drawn on Wednesday and Thursday because I had shipping scheduled for Thursday and Friday. That was not ideal. He needs more flexibility. It would also be better if shipping week landed when the kids are in school. They’ve been great about finding other things to do, and even helping. During shipping hours there have been no problems. Sketching hours are a different story. Howard really needs quiet, un-interrupted space to get into the sketch zone. In the sketch zone he plows through boxes of sketches without pondering his aches. Any interruption, however small, is a chance for his brain to get distracted. In order to prevent distractions, I’m on duty to manage conflicts. So I’d switch from shipping work to household management work with very few breaks. Friday night and Saturday were the first real down time we’ve had all week. Those were the hardest bits, and they’re simple to do differently next time. Everything else worked better and the stress was less intense for being spread out over a week instead of focused on a single day.

Today is Sunday. Tomorrow we ship out the next books. Tuesday I clean up all the messes and make the house back into order. Howard gets back to writing and drawing comics both Monday and Tuesday. On Wednesday the traveling begins. I suspect we’ll be tired enough to sleep on the plane.

Shipping day…somewhere in the middle

By / June 6, 2012

This week it is very hard for me to hold on to the day. The part of my brain which measures time by events is sure that we’ve had at least a week since Monday. Physiology agrees with that estimate, surely I can’t have hefted 4000 lbs of boxes in a smaller span of time. Schedule keeper knows full well that we have lots of week left because there are events planned for this week which have not yet occurred. The planner wants to estimate me backward in time because there are many tasks yet to get done before those scheduled events and with all these tasks, surely we have more days for them. Visual cues are confused as at least a couple of my children haven’t changed clothes in several days. Kids do that if I am sufficiently distracted. My computer thinks today is Wednesday. It is probably right, though I have to work hard to believe that it is not Tuesday or Thursday instead.

I am so very tired.
But happy.
Today I was flipping through invoices and noticing how many of the names I recognize. I see them year after year as we release books, names from all over the world. I’ve never been to Finland, Germany, Indonesia, Spain, France, India, or Portugal, but our books are going there. I see these names and remember the wonder of it all, that Howard and I, who feel very ordinary, can be part of something that travels so far and brings at least a small measure of happiness.

I’m also happy because the new “small batches every day” system has succeeded in lowering the intensity of my stress. I still get stressed. There isn’t any less work, but the work is getting done. Next time we need to leave Howard more lead time on the sketching, but he’s being amazing, as always. The first batch of sketched books will go out tomorrow. All of the unsketched books are sent.

The kids have been amazing troopers. They’ve fed themselves breakfasts, helped make dinners, and not complained when we have to kick them out of the family room to get work done.

Tomorrow begins early, all my days do this week. Tomorrow is…Thursday.
I’m pretty sure.
Whatever day it is, it’ll be a good one.