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I’m at the end of a day where I can look around my house and see that it is more organized than it was when the day began. The same is true for my email and my task list. I like being at the end of that sort of day. I particularly like it when we also took the entire family out to go see Avengers: Age of Ultron. We frequently have trouble finding an activity that appeals to everyone, but this movie fit the bill. Everyone had a good time and we all came home happy. All that remains is to remind the kids that we still have school in the morning. None of us wants to remember that. We’re all very ready to have summer. This feeling is amplified by having Kiki home from college. Four weeks left. We should be able to make it through.

For now, I need to go to bed so that tomorrow can be another day where things are more organized at the end of it.

We’ve gotten to the time of year where I’m counting down days. Less than one day until I fetch Kiki from college. Two days until we have a family excursion in preparation for Pioneer Trek. Five days until my son is supposed to have a big history fair project ready for presentations. Eighteen days until the Kickstarter closes and we switch into creation mode. Nineteen days until the new carpet is installed. Four weeks until school is over for the year and we switch into summer mode, which will also include school, because Link needs to make up credits. There are other things to count toward, but these are the ones that I keep counting even when I try not to. I don’t really want to count these things. I want to be content in the days as they come to me, but getting closer to these landmarks feels like progress.

The good news is that I’m beginning to be able to put my house back in order. The room shifting is mostly accomplished. Now I just need to sort through the displaced items and find them new homes. Or get rid of them. I like getting rid of things. It means I won’t have to clean them up or store them ever again. Having Kiki at home will help with this.

In the meantime I’ll just keep putting on foot in front of the other. If I keep doing that, then eventually I’ll end up somewhere else. I could do with a “somewhere else” that has more routine and fewer mental health issues to manage. Last week I counted the hours I spent on mental health stuff. Fifteen hours. That’s a part time job that I’d love to be able to ditch because everyone was doing better. The good news is that we’ve finished jumping through hoops and having application meetings. Going forward we’ll just be having the appointments which are actually supposed to help instead of the ones which determine what sorts of help we qualify for. I have lots of thoughts on all of this, but I’ve had trouble sorting them into anything coherent. Hopefully that will come back as I put more things in order around here.

I’m having the kind of week where I spend all of my hours on important things, but all the work is broken into small portions of time by all of the other work. And none of it is finished, so I know that next week and the week after will be the same way. I feel like I’m failing at all of it, even though I have logical evidence that I am not.

So here are the things that make up my week:

Parenting:
My 17 year old had an emotionally rough week, (depression stinks) which means I had extra time spent trying to help him, extra consultations with professionals, ongoing appointments to set up support structures which are supposed to help, but thus far have only created extra burden in testing and appointments.

My 12 year old has a history fair project. It is big. I have to make sure he does all the research and then we will have to do all the preparation and construction. This big project is not his only homework. I know some of it is being missed because he is not good at tracking and I am distracted.

The Kickstarter:
We’re really excited that it has hit several stretch goals. Hopefully it will hit many more. For the duration of its run Howard and I are answering questions, corresponding with backers, and preparing new things for people to see. We’re also reaching out and trying to spread the word. All of this spills over into all of the brain space that we need to be using for other things, because the other things do not stop.

Design work:
Right now much of this is in support of the Kickstarter. But it is separate work from what it takes to actually manage the Kickstarter itself. The fast turn around necessary to have things to show to backers is hard on my brain.

Shipping and customer support:
I can’t allow the urgency of the Kickstarter make me neglect the good people who need help or who have ordered things through our store. They’re they people who keep the lights on around here. I have to set aside time for them.

Accounting:
There are bills to pay and reports to file. If I don’t keep on top of the numbers then my anxiety goes up and we make mistakes in our planning. The outcome of the Kickstarter is a giant question mark in my accounting plans for the rest of the year. I’m trying to ignore the question mark and just pay the bills.

Remodeling:
We haven’t had any construction this week, but we still have piles of things sitting in working and living spaces. This negatively impacts my ability to think clearly and makes me house grouchy. Word is that the carpet won’t be ready to install until mid-May. I can’t wait that long to clear away the piles, so Saturday is going to be a shifting things day.

Staying sane:
I’ve been operating under strain for quite some time. In the past few weeks I’ve been taking deliberate steps to strengthen myself. This involves getting together with friends who are in the same emotional place, attending a support group, reading scriptures, reading in general, and taking time off. This is all important. It is the only way I can continue to carry all the things. But it takes time in an already time-stressed week.

Add to all that the regular things such as laundry, random phone calls from people who only want a minute of my time, and the fact that my kids have decided that digging holes is the new cool thing, which means I have dirt everywhere. (They track it in, then their sweeping is inadequate.) I want to do all the things well. Instead I’m managing to do the most important ones adequately. I’m fairly certain that somewhere up ahead is a week that is less busy. I’ll enjoy that when I get there. For right now, I need to get back to work.

It has been noisy in my head, noisy in my house, and noisy on the internet. I have been trying to focus despite all the noise, but sometimes that is difficult. We’re in the final week before launching the Kickstarter for Planet Mercenary: The Role Playing Game, which is an RPG set in the Schlockiverse. I’ve been deep in graphic design and concept development. I’m very excited about the project and hope to have some cool things to show you very soon. My kids are home for spring break and we’ve been doing some house reorganization as a result. I suppose it shouldn’t surprise me that the various types of noise combined to punch some anxiety buttons. It is nothing I can’t handle, but it does mean I’m spending energy handling anxiety when I want to be spending all of my energy working on Planet Mercenary.

In my more thoughtful moments, I’ve been pondering the ways that one person’s emotional needs can come into conflict with those of another. I see it all the time with my kids. This one needs very much to tell every single bit of her story. That one has accumulated resentment because he listens all the time and is never listened to. Just this morning I was posting to a friend about the unlimited self-centered myopia of teens. I know that at some point in their twenties they’ll finally figure out that 95% of other people’s choices have nothing to do with them. I expect that they’ll come and tell me about their grand realization. Then I’ll say “Wow. you’re right. Glad you see it.” Though what I’ll want to say is “Gah! I’ve been trying to hammer that into your head since you were twelve.” Of course, teens aren’t the only ones who do this. Adults are guilty too. I catch myself at it all the time.

As I’ve been out and about on the noisy internet, I see another human tendency in action. People tend to project their own internal critical voices onto other people. I know I do this, because I’ve been stung by it on multiple occasions. I read a comment and feel judged, but if I come back later, in a different frame of mind, I can see that there are alternate readings of those words which don’t mean what I read into them. I’ve also seen it in my kids. I come into the room calling their name and they snap angrily “Yeah. I know you want me to come do the dishes.” In fact, I’d entered to ask if they wanted a treat from the store. With my kids, I have to recognize that when I get a response that is out of proportion to what I said, then there is something else going on inside my kid’s head. I know that is true when I’m the one snapping at them. I’m almost always grouchy about something entirely different.

We all live in our own worlds inside our own heads and sometimes those worlds collide in very unpleasant ways. Right now my internal world is a noisy place, but I’m reasonably certain that if I just keep muddling through things will quiet down again.

I needed to reach Monday at full efficiency. I was scared that I would not because I was the opposite on Friday and Saturday. But Monday came and I worked at top speed. This is necessary because the next few weeks are filled with project launches. I was handling art contracts for the Planet Mercenary RPG. Planet Mercenary is going to require a Kickstarter and there is much work to do preparatory to that. I need to make spreadsheets and do math. I was wrestling with the script for the next bonus story. I’ve been exchanging email with the designer for the new Cobble Stones covers. I’ve been helping manage administrative tasks for the Out of Excuses workshop and retreat. My partially-homeschooled son needs me to keep his schooling on track and to require him to work even when he doesn’t feel like it. There are are couple of birthdays coming right up. Today was the opening of exhibitor housing for GenCon, which is always a stressful free-for-all trying to get the rooms we need. And to help fund all of the things, we needed to run a sale in the Schlock store. (Coupon code BIRFDAY15 for 20% off your order.) The sale has done well, for which I am extremely grateful. The funds that are coming in will enable all of the other things. Turning inventory into funds with which to buy new inventory is a necessary business process. I’ve spent large portions of yesterday and today over at the warehouse sending packages.

This is a busy time. It is the sort of busy that I love. Yet every single moment I’m aware of the half dozen things which I ought to be doing and am not. So, I’m stressed. And I’m very worried that I will disappoint people. In fact a part of my brain is constantly convinced that I already have. I try to ignore the feeling as much as I can because it doesn’t help, and I’m pretty sure it is lying to me.

In the meantime it is Tuesday. I’m grateful that I have so much of the week left. Yet I feel like it can’t possibly still be Tuesday because I’ve done so many things since Sunday night. Tomorrow I get to retrieve Howard from the airport. He’s been off in Chicago recording episodes for Writing Excuses. I’ll be glad to have him home. Even better, none of us have any travel scheduled until June. We’re going to have several months in a row where we can stay home and do all the projects. We’re going to need it.

I woke up this week. Not literally. It’s not like I spent the first three weeks of January (and November and December) sleeping all the time. I was awake far more hours than not. Yet this week feels like waking up. It is like remembering what well-rested feels like because the baby began sleeping through the night. That analogy is actually fairly apropos. Because this week I was not called over to a school to manage an emotional crisis. Not once. Which is a startling difference from the last few months when the vast majority of my work days were interrupted.

January is always a strange month. The beginning of it is often buried in tasks that are required to tie off the loose ends from the year before. I always have piles of accounting work to do. This year I also had many meetings, doctor’s appointments, and arrangements relating to my son’s new schooling format. Additionally, we had new health insurance. We’ve had the same insurance plan for a decade, so I had to wrap my head around the coverages and costs. The process has made me realize how very bad our old plan was. For the first time we have help covering all the mental health care that we’ve been paying out of pocket. So the news was mostly good, but I couldn’t be sure it would be until I started using the plan. January also needs to launch the new year’s efforts. This means that I have to wrap my head around the project list and start moving toward new goals. I used to be able to do all the transitioning in the first week of the year, leaving the rest of January for a mid-winter project. This year was more complicated. There were lots of loose ends. There are also lots of projects to launch.

At least now I’m finally rolling on new and exciting efforts. LTUE is only three weeks away. They’ve posted their schedule and I’m excited for the topics I’ll get to discuss. Before that I get to go on a personal trip to visit a friend, which I’ll very much enjoy. I’ve finally contacted a cover designer to get better covers for the Cobble Stones books. I’ve been etching glassware to see if I can find a process that is feasible to produce product for Schlock customers. We’ve also been having Schlock RPG meetings for the big project we’ll be launching later this year. The one thing I haven’t done enough of this week was working on actual writing. Some weeks are like that, but I really need to get back to it, particularly since my solo presentation at LTUE will be about breaking through writing blockages.

It has been a good week. I’d like to have another one like it.

I wish that I had the spare energy to dive into my son’s science fair project and exploit it’s educational value. I long for the patience to encourage him to do every step himself. I want him to learn about putting together a complex undertaking and to feel accomplished when it is done. Instead the project lands in a time when I don’t have that energy to spare. The project will get done, but it will not be the educational experience it could have been if I had more to spare.

Ditto my daughter’s history fair project which has a similarly grandiose intention, and which falls on the same week as my son’s science fair project.

I’m grateful that my kids have schools and teachers who offer them amazing opportunities to learn. I wish that we didn’t have to turn down so many. But there is no way that we can do science fair, and history fair, and spelling bee, and geography bee, and knowledge bowl, and after school robotics class, and orchestra, and, and, and… We have to choose. I wish there were some way to transport a portion of these opportunities to other children who have slim pickings in the opportunity department.

I feel guilty for complaining about abundance, even though I know that abundance can cause as many problems as scarcity. I particularly wish this on civil rights day when I think about the words of Martin Luther King, think about how far we’ve come as a society, and how much better we could be than we currently are.

I’m grateful for the people in the past who helped forge the world I live in. I’m grateful for my friends now who are willing to put themselves in the line of fire to forge a better world for my children. I hope that I can be one of them as I’m needed. This is a day for wishes and gratitude.

We’ve been working on a jigsaw puzzle in our family room and we’ve reached the stage where all that is left is different textures of tree bark. I stood over that puzzle and felt completely discouraged. I tried one little piece then another. I looked at shapes. I switched to looking at textures. I moved pieces around, sorting them in different ways. Every so often I found the right place for a piece, but mostly I stared and accomplished very little. Then suddenly something clicked in my brain. This piece goes there and that one there. Piece after piece things fell into place. I hardly had to search at all. I just grabbed things as if I’d already known where they were. An entire section, that little side tree, came together in under five minutes. It was fun. Then I found myself back at the staring part, waiting and hoping for another click.

Right now there are parts of my life that feel impossible. I’ve stared at them and stressed about them endlessly. I’ve shuffled them around this way and that way. The bits are so scattered and so many, that I have a hard time believing that they will all fit into the available space. I have to hope that somewhere ahead of me there is a click where pieces will fall into place. I have to hope that at some future point all these frustrating fragments will come together into an attractive picture. I also have to remember that all the staring and sorting pieces, which feels fruitless, is actually what makes the click possible. All that time when I thought I was gaining nothing, a part of my brain was cataloging pieces. When my brain clicked, fitting things together became effortless. I could really use some effortless, because staring at this mess is very discouraging.

The vast majority of the packages are sent. I’ve got maybe fifty left. They’re all orders which contain non-book merchandise. They’re also all US. The international orders went out last week. This is the longest I’ve ever spent in heavy shipping mode. I’ve been managing packages for this book release since the week before Thanksgiving. This is my third week of shipping all the things. I’ll be very glad to be done.

Link was happy today. I’m so glad to see him happy. I hope that the combination of therapy and school schedule changes mean that things are finally better for him. I’m going to take it one day at a time.

I can feel the difference in my thyroid dosage. I’m not yet able to see it in my life. But that is the case with a subtle shift. The effect is barely noticeable at first. The cumulative effect is significant. More time is needed.

The warehouse is something of a wreck right now. It is littered with stray tape and piles of boxes that no one has taken time to collapse. My crew from today asked if we should do some clean up before we left. Unfortunately I’d run out of time. I had to take my son to his therapy appointment. This has been the case for much of this shipping. We put packages together as fast as we can until the time is gone. I’ll have a warehouse clean up day next week. That is when I’ll finally get to evaluate the state of the warehouse and figure out what to do with all the extra pallets I’ve got laying around. It is really nice that the shipping mess is over at the warehouse instead of taking up space in my house.

I bought the kids fast food for dinner tonight. We brought it home and they sat around the table teasing each other and comparing french fries. I watched them and thought about articles I’ve read that praised the value of family dinner. It was talking about home cooked meals. There was another article which cited evidence that sometimes the stress of providing home-cooked meals can negate the value of them. My fast food solution followed the spirit of both articles. It is the coming together that matters more than the origin of the food. We’re trying to eat together more. On other nights that will mean home cooked. For tonight we laughed over french fries.

Kiki comes home on Thursday and we get to have her until January. This time Howard will be the one to drive and go get her. I’m glad she’s coming home and glad I don’t have to make the drive this week.

The weather has been warm and the pansies I planted in October are still blooming. I love that I have growing flowers in December. I’ve also got two African violets in bloom. These are small happy things. Hopefully I’ll soon have time to light some candles and watch the wax drip. It may be silly, but I find it beautiful and it makes me happy.

It appears that the last time I was clear headed enough to sort through my email was before Thanksgiving. So many unanswered messages in there. I’ve been spending every waking minute either on family things or shipping work. The other day I tweeted:

I could do all the things if the things would just hold still for a while.

The shipping is stable and simple, there’s just a lot of it. It is the family stuff which is all comprised of moving targets.

The last of the international packages will go out tomorrow.