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This afternoon I got to listen to myself say “Yes, I’ve made a bunch of extra work for myself, but the extra work is much less stressful than what I had before. Because I know at the end of the work I will feel confident that I delivered what the backers expected. That is a much nicer feeling than sick doubt.” All of which is true. Much of the piles of work ahead of me are tedious, but right now I’ll take tedious over complicated. So many of the things on my To Do list are complicated and require difficult decisions.

While I was at SiWC I got to sit down with a close friend and talk about the things in her life and the things in mine. We talked for hours. Several times during that conversation I spoke things that I hadn’t put into words before they came out of my mouth. This is one of the treasures about long hours spent with a friend. There are so many thoughts that I’ve buried deep underneath the surface pleasantries. I never meant to hide them. I’m not ashamed of anything that is in there. I just didn’t have time to pay attention to my thoughts as things happened. So I end up with layers of thoughts, so many layers that I’ve forgotten what the floor looks like. I write about the things as they happen, but fundamentally writing is like talking to myself. It does not spark the same insights that happen when my thoughts meet someone else’s thoughts.

Many of the thoughts buried in my head are sad. I’ve collected memories of many difficult moments over the past few years. The sadness doesn’t go away just because the thought is buried. It leaks. And it doesn’t magically get better even if the situations which caused the sadness are mostly resolved. Before I can let the sadness go, I have to find the source of it and see it for what it is. Only then can I move onward. All these layers of unprocessed emotion are part of why the anxiety gets bad sometimes. They are definitely a source of fatigue. It is hard to keep moving with so much built up in my head.

I’m trying to be better about seeing friends. I’m trying to spend time with people who don’t mind listening while I sort. There’s just so much that I worry I’ll wear out their patience. It would be very nice to start reducing the quantity of unprocessed emotion rather than watching it accumulate.

In the past four days we have relocated our wall mounted television, disassembled and reassembled our Ikea couch so that it is mirrored from its former configuration, pulled down our wall mounted media shelving, prepped half the room for painting (the other half got painted a month ago), and began repainting trim. The room is going to be so much nicer when all the things are done. The rearrangement makes much better use of the space. Also, we were really tired of the white walls which had 18 years of accumulated nicks, stains, and smears.

Other things I’ve been working on:
Prepping the annotated PDF of the Seventy Maxims book. I need to get that to backers this week.
Assembling a powerpoint presentation on cover design
Working on a presentation about picture books.
Shipping packages
Helping my two school kids track their homework
Taking my older son to his first class at Passages, which is a transitional program for autistic adults
Mowing the foot-high lawn so that it won’t kill itself over the winter

Even with all of that, I’m surrounded by things I ought to do, but haven’t managed to squeeze in. I need to catch up on laundry because tomorrow Howard needs to pack for his trip to ConStellation over in Huntsville Alabama. The Planet Mercenary book needs more attention (though I’ve spent significant attention aiding and abetting Howard’s editing time on that project.) I see cluttery spots all over my house, and then there are the spots which are outright dirty and need to be cleaned.

I haven’t had a whole lot of time for slow thoughts about big things. And some of my thinking time gets sucked into politics or into watching a hurricane slowly create disaster as it marches inevitably across homes. With something that huge, all a person can do is get out of the way and then hunker down until the storm passes. That last sentence applies equally to the hurricane and national politics. I’ll be glad when we finally get to the day when I can cast my vote. I’ll be even more glad when the noise dies down.

The good news is that it finally feels like we’re stabilizing into the school routine. We’ve finished clearing up the make up work from our trip. The days have begun to have a rhythm to them. That’ll be disrupted a little by Howard’s trip this weekend and then by my trip next weekend, but the routine is nice to have.

I keep looking at my calendar, mapping out the shape for the next few weeks. It is a necessary task because the cruise trip loomed so large that I couldn’t see past it. Now the trip is behind me and I have to figure out how to organize the next things. My two school kids have extra homework, but we now have all the papers we need to get that done. I’ve cleared out the shipping queue and done the accounting. The last loads of vacation laundry are running now.

That only leaves the giant projects which feel horribly overdue and which I can’t always wrap my brain around. There are moments when I can see exactly how it is all going to work. Those slip away from me when I get distracted. Then I am left with doing the next step, because I can see how to do that. The hope is that enough next steps in a row will eventually land us in project completion.

In the midst of building momentum for the big projects, I am also trying to use the lessons learned on the cruise trip to make small changes here at home. Over time small changes create massive shifts in trajectory.

We do have a pair of trips that land before the end of October, one for Howard, one for me. But compared to the cruise they are logistically tiny. Pretty much all we have to do for Howard is pack a suitcase and shove him onto a plane. My trip requires a bit more preparation because I have two presentations to fine tune. Yet once the presentations are done, I expect the trip itself to be a delight. Howard will have the kids so the only one to manage will be me. Also, the conference features several writing friends I am excited to spend time with.

It is nice to be able to see far ahead on the schedule without a massive anxiety thing in the way.

Sometime in the last month I had a conversation with a friend where we were commiserating about how often we feel like failures. She said something along the lines of “Yeah, I got grocery shopping done today. That’s it.” I don’t really remember the rest of the conversation, but that sentiment (and the self-critical tone she used to say it) have stuck with me.

As a society we seriously underestimate the value of household tasks such as grocery shopping and laundry. I’m not just talking about how we don’t pay money for this work, we also speak of these things as if maintaining a functioning household is so simple that every adult should be able to do it without stress. That is simply not true. Many household tasks are very complex, we just lose sight of that complexity because they are so familiar that some of them have become routine for us. Anything we practice becomes easier for us to accomplish, but that does not make the task itself easy.

Take grocery shopping for example. It requires the ability to inventory food currently stored at your house. Then you have to plan for future eating based on your past eating experiences. You have to evaluate rate-of-use on foods to decide when is the right time to replenish a particular item. You also have to calculate how much money you have available to spend, which might require a review of your budget. You have to look at your schedule to figure out when you have time to make the trip, which requires a knowledge of how long grocery shopping usually takes. You have to arrange for transportation of yourself to the store and back with the groceries. Even if you have a car readily available to you, that adds an entire set of tasks to keep the car functioning so that it may be used at a moment’s notice. Once you are at the store, you have hundreds of micro decisions to make. If you didn’t bring a list, you have to remember what you have at home and select based on that memory. Whether or not you brought a list, you have to navigate the store to find the items that you need. This requires a knowledge of what items are usually grouped together and where this particular store puts that particular grouping of items. While in the store you are confronted with hundreds of items which tempt you to purchase them. You have to decide, on the fly, whether or not you should. This involves thinking about budget, space in cupboards/fridge/freezer, and also an evaluation for whether this tempting item matches the diet or lifestyle that you want to have. Each micro decision makes your brain a little bit tired, rendering each subsequent decision fractionally more difficult than the one before it. When your cart is full or your list complete, you face further micro decisions: which line to check out, how to stack things on the conveyor, and paper or plastic. Or if you use a self-check option, then you need to navigate the system of ringing up and bagging your own groceries. When you arrive at home, all the things you have purchased need to be relocated to their appropriate storage locations.

Grocery shopping is far from simple. It is a hugely complex task and it is only one of many household tasks that require regular attention to keep things running. Yet we tend to discount the time, effort, brain necessary to make sure these tasks happen. If you add in tending to the needs of pets or other people, the level of complexity multiplies. It is all valuable work. Yet so often we (I definitely include myself in this) arrive at the end of a day full of household tasks feeling like we accomplished nothing important. Which is funny, because for people who lack basic necessities, these “simple” household and life maintenance tasks are of primary importance.

Adulting is hard. Most people struggle with some aspect of it. I’m watching my adult children as they learn to navigate all the household management stuff, and it reminds me how complicated it really is.

Wednesday wasn’t really hard, not in comparison to some of the hard days we’ve had in the past few years. At least this time my kid was able to recognize the impending meltdown, call me, and articulate what went wrong. I still had to bring him home and let him curl up under a weighted blanket with a soft thing to hug tight until the shakes went away. Yet both he and I spent some time with the thought “how are we going to do this year if things are already going off the rails?” Except things weren’t off the rails, not really. This year he has several classes that he actively enjoys and looks forward to attending. This year he’s able to call me between classes and tell me “I think it might be good for me to have a notebook so I could write notes on when I’m anxious. Then we could figure out what is triggering it.” This year he is looking for solutions instead of flopping into a heap.

Thursday was a little hard, but only in my head. The events of Wednesday churned up emotional sediment that clouded my thinking all day long. I woke to the day certain that anything I touched was doomed to failure. So I pitched my plan to do creative work and instead asked Howard to give me the files for Random Access Memorabilia. Doing layout on a Schlock book is familiar. I know exactly how it needs to go. The work was comforting because I know it isn’t overdue or complicated.

This morning was better. All my kids attended all of their classes. I was able to see that I’m not failing at everything. I can also see that despite shifting around kids’ school schedules multiple times, and despite having to bring my son home mid-day 3 times (so far) We’re still aimed at having a good school year. Of course there is a great big disruption coming up in two weeks when I take all of my kids on the Writing Excuses cruise. That will mean missed classes, make up work, and having to re-orient ourselves when we get back. Yet that too will be a learning experience.

I acquired a waterproof camera because I expect the Writing Excuses cruise with my kids to include water-based events that I want to record. I took it to a local pool to test out how it works, the answer is: pretty well. Seeing the screen underwater was a bit of a challenge, as was aiming for moving targets. But out of 170 photos, a few turned out really well.

GenCon begins this Thursday, but my GenCon week has already begun. I’ve been prepping and packing since late last week. Today I’ll board a plane so that on Wednesday I can help set up our booth. We’re booth 1343. Here’s a handy map to help you find us.

If you are at GenCon, I hope you do take some time to stop by. One of the things I love about GenCon is that we have a fantastic booth crew. I seriously do not know how we would run this show without them. Because they’re amazing, I’m able to go and spend time with the GenCon Writer’s Symposium instead of being pinned to the booth.

The symposium has put me on some events and I’m excited about them. I believe the symposium space is all located inside the Westin Hotel. You can see the full schedule and info at http://www.genconwriters.com/

Thurs 10am The Business of Self Publishing. Location: Cabinet (which I assume is a conference room named cabinet rather than an actual cupboard.)

Friday 4pm Writing Author Bios. Location: Congress 1 (Again, pretty sure this is a conference room)

Saturday 5pm Structuring Life to Support Creativity. Location: Congress 1
This is a solo presentation about which I am excited and nervous.

Saturday 6pm Breaking Through Writer’s Block. Location: Congress 1
Another solo presentation right after the first one.

On those solo presentations, I’m torn between hoping that I won’t be speaking to an empty room and fear that the room will be dauntingly full of people who expect me to say articulate and useful things. Fortunately both presentations are ones that I’ve given before and they were well received. Some of my time on the flight to Indianapolis will be me refreshing and updating my notes.

This year’s GenCon will feature nine Planet Mercenary Demo games. Much of my work in the past couple of days has been to make sure our marvelous GMs have the info and tools necessary to run the games. And here is where I must sing the praises of our book designer Mike Brodu. He made beautiful character sheets for us.

The games will be run at 9am, 1pm, and 6pm on Thursday, Friday, Saturday. They’ll all be located in the JW Marriott room 202. You’re welcome to wander by and see the fun. Or you can stop by the booth and come get one of the spare character sheets. We printed up extra and there is a space on the back where Howard will draw you a sketch. The sheets are labeled GenCon 2016, so they’re collectible. I’m certain we’ll run games again next year, but the sheets will be different from these.

Another reason to come by the booth is that we have lots of fun things to look at and buy. Force Multiplication will be there with the bonus story that I wrote. We’ll have copies of Hold on to Your Horses and Strength of Wild Horses. Additionally, I’ve packed some of Keliana Tayler’s limited edition prints into my bag. They’re worth seeing.

As always, we’ll be sharing our booth with Jim Zub. If you haven’t heard of SkullKickers or Wayward, you definitely need to stop by and take a look. Jim’s work is fun to read. My kids have been asking for the next installment of Wayward ever since I brought home the first treasury. While you’re wandering the dealer’s hall, stop by the Crafty Games booth. That is the convention home for Patrick Kapera who is our editor for Planet Mercenary. His work is amazing and they’ve got a new Mistborn game out which is based on the work of Brandon Sanderson.

It is going to be a very busy week. If you’re not at GenCon, but want to follow along, I recommend checking my twitter feed @SandraTayler or Howard’s twitter feed @HowardTayler We try to tweet as we can during the convention. It is possible that I’ll blog as well, but often I’ve used up all my brain by the time I can sit down to write words.

And now I must go do all the last minute things to prepare.

This last week before GenCon I had a to do list as long as my arm. I began whittling away at it on Monday morning. By afternoon I was ready to run out and get Prescription refills. Then this happened.

A semi shed giant pieces of tire across my lane and I didn’t see them until the car in front of me sent them flying at my car. No time to avoid, I drove over them. So all of Tuesday was spent talking to insurance people and the car repair shop. The good news is that I have insurance and a fairly low deductible. Unknown is whether this incident will raise my insurance rates. It is a possibility since I had an accident (my fault) only a couple of months ago. But more good news is that my local insurance agent and the car repair place conspired to give me a rental car at no charge even though my policy does not cover rental vehicles.

This is also happening in my house this week:

Home construction is not what I’d pick the week before a major convention, but that is how the schedule worked out. That nook used to be a fireplace that we never used except as a flat place to accumulate all the things which didn’t really have a place to belong. Now it will either be a game closet or the storage space for electronic devices. We’re gaining a significant amount of square footage and we like it already.

I also spent time on Tuesday preparing these. They’re the final invoices and postage for the Force Multiplication shipping.

I bought boxes for the orders to go into. They also arrived on Tuesday:

Wednesday morning I hauled two of my kids over to the warehouse and put them to work making packages.

Unfortunately the air conditioning at the warehouse is not working well, so we were hot, sweaty, and tired in short order. That’s when a truck pulled up. I’d been told “We’ll call Wednesday morning for a delivery appointment.” But they didn’t call, they just showed up. I guess it was fortunate we were spending a hot day at the warehouse.
The truck delivered these:

And these:

And these:

All of which are things we are going to need for shipping Planet Mercenary once we have the books done. Unfortunately the contract with the trucking company didn’t obligate him to wheel the pallets inside. He kindly did for the two lighter pallets. But the heavy pallet was too much to try to get over the small lip into our warehouse. Which left my son and I hefting heavy boxes in 90 degree heat. Had the company actually scheduled a delivery appointment, I’d have arranged for more lifting help. But we got it done.

Then we finished the shipping:

Today I had to scramble to assemble sheets for the Planet Mercenary games that will be run while we’re at GenCon. It was my plan to scramble something together. But when my book designer heard what I was up to, he said “would you like me to do that?” So instead of spending all day frantically attempting to lay out the sheet, I was able to spend 3/4 of the day making sure I’d collected all the relevant information and images. Then I put them into a format where the designer could plunk them into place. It took much longer than expected because I was pulling information from six different sources. I shudder to think how stressed I would have been had I also had to try to make it all attractive.
This was my first pass attempt. Note that some of the elements were borrowed from a prior design pass that my designer did. I don’t have the skill to make some of the decorative elements, but I can plunk them into place:

This is my layout designer’s first pass:

Seriously folks, be willing to pay money for good design. It makes all the difference.

Since my designer currently resides on the other side of the world, I was able to collect all the info while he was sleeping. Then he could work while I was sleeping. (Though I’m not actually sleeping at this moment. Hello 3am insomnia.) Tomorrow (Friday) I will collect the images and haul them to a printer.

Sprinkled throughout the week was customer support for the Writing Excuses cruise and for Schlock customers.

Thursday also contained taking my daughter shopping for the last wardrobe thing she needed in order to be a bridesmaid at a wedding on Friday. She also needed to get a painting framed because it is her gift to the couple.

Things on my list for Friday:
Accounting
Pre-pay hotel room for GenCon booth staff
Write a couple of emails related to the WX cruise
Call a doctor and remind him that he was supposed to send a prescription to the pharmacy
Final odds and ends for the Force Multiplication shipping
Update some store items in the wake of Force Multiplication shipping
Take Pre Gen sheets to printer
Make reference cards related to the Planet Mercenary GenCon games
Assemble player kits for the GenCon players
Assemble GM Kits for the kind folks who will be running our games
Prepare two solo presentations that I’ll be giving at GenCon
Help Kiki sort out some plot issues with a story she is working on so that she can continue to work while I’m fully occupied at GenCon
Go over the 70 Maxims book copy edits
Work on collecting the remaining handwritten notes for 70 Maxims book
Scan the handwriting
Assemble 70 maxims pages to check layout
Begin packing for GenCon
Move things around in my family room so that the workmen can paint ceiling and walls.
Attend a wedding reception

That is more things than I can reasonably do in a single day. Fortunately some of them can roll over onto Saturday and Monday. But right now I need to go see if writing up this blog post has now convinced my brain that it does not have to hold onto every single thought. We can let go and sleep. Really.

This morning, while I was dropping of packages, I listened to a pair of postal employees argue over who was right and who was wrong in a recent shooting case. As I listened, the following thought occurred to me. I’m still turning it over in my head to see if it rings true.
The thought:
As a private citizen it is not my job to judge individuals (unless I’m on a jury), but it is my job to pass judgement on the systems which judge those individuals and the laws that they are judged by. It is also my job to take action if I feel the systems or laws are broken or unfair.

In traveling to and from the post office, I pass by a giant flag that waves over a grocery store parking lot. It was at half mast. Again. And I tried to remember when I last saw it at full mast. Or when it last spent an appreciable length of time at full mast. I would like to have a couple of months where no national or international tragedies send flags half way down the pole. It has all started to blur a bit, is this the left over half mast from last week, or the new one from yesterday? I don’t want to be asking that question anymore.

I recently had someone say to me that the internet is in it’s “wild west” phase. That with the advent of social media we haven’t had enough time to build social rules and laws about appropriate behavior as digital citizens of the online community. This feels true to me. It also starts me thinking about history, because social upheaval is not a new phenomenon. I wonder how societies felt as they navigated from having a mostly illiterate populace into having a mostly literate one. That changed all the rules. It shifted the balances of power. It changed the world forever. Or what about the shifts from hunting and gathering to agriculture? Again all the structures changed and it must have felt like the world was falling apart.

I’m certain that there were battles and deaths over both literacy and agriculture. There still are on smaller scales. It is always terrifying when the solutions which used to work don’t anymore. It is frightening when a person is used to having a particular capability and that capability is removed. It is frightening to see power shift into new hands, because we don’t know what those hands will do with it. Fear makes people rash in their decisions and actions.

I can only hope that since one of the hallmarks of the digital revolution is the speed at which things alter, that this will also be reflected in the speed at which we settle into social structures which are more adaptive for the post-internet era.

My time has been much occupied with making and mailing packages. These days we do Schlock shipping in patches over a week or more. It is less stress on me and causes less trouble with the post office.

I’ve also been spending time with cruise administration and planning. We have many attendees who have never been on a cruise before, so I’ve been helping to answer questions and make sure that everything is handled on schedule. I’m the help desk and the interface with our cruise liaison, so it means email. I’ve also been prepping and planning for the things we’ll be doing with our kids while on the cruise. I don’t know that we’ll ever be able to afford to bring them all again, so I’m making sure we get the chance to do interesting things on shore.

I’ve been working with the 70 Maxims files, prepping them to go to print. We’ve begun the process of creating all the handwritten notes. It is a slow process, but the result is beginning to look really cool.

I’ve been helping Kiki untangle some plot problems for a graphic novel project she is working on. I’ve also been an advisor for another of her projects which launched and then had to unlaunch because of a problem. There was an emotional ride involved, but all is at peace now. Particularly since some college friends have come to spend the weekend. Friends are a good thing.

I helped Gleek dye her hair bright blue. It is surprising to me how quickly seeing the blue began to feel normal.

All of these are good things. Less good are the anxiety attacks which lurk waiting to pounce when I’m trying to sleep. And then there are the random ebbs and flows of mental health which require management at times. And by “times” I mean “daily.” Rare is the day when none of us are off kilter. But the good news is that our established coping strategies usually fend off full meltdown mode.

Yet, when I take time to look at where we were this time last year, I am so glad to be in this year instead. We are all in better places than we were. I have large fears about what will come when school starts again, but I do my best to not let them run amok. When I look back at how far we’ve come, I can sometimes believe that we’ll manage to weather whatever comes next.

Another thing which uses hours is preparing for GenCon, which is only a few weeks away. I have many things I would like to do before it is time to depart. I have a couple of presentations to prepare, and hand outs to make. I’ve already sent packages to our team in Indiana. Exhibitor instructions are sitting in my mailbox so that we can properly set up the booth. When I get back from GenCon we’ll be right up against the beginning of school, but I’m trying hard not to think too much about that.

For now, I’ll be taking each day one at a time and trying to remember which day of the week it is. Pretty sure today is Thursday. Summer days blend into each other.