Work

Catching Up

By / February 18, 2014

“I heard you were all sick. Are you feeling better?” my neighbor asked over the short fence which divides her garden from my driveway. It was a beautiful day which invited her to begin clearing her garden beds and made me wish I had time to clear mine.
“We’re still recovering.” I answered. It has become my standard answer, because while it is true to say that we’re better than we were, some of us are still not well. My answer always surprises people. In our world of modern medicine and vaccines, no one is used to seeing an illness take this long to abate. Or maybe that is just brain wiring. It takes three weeks to make a habit, which means that five weeks of illness has lasted so long that sick becomes normal.

Last night I did an hour of angry cleaning. It is the sort of cleaning I do when I want to cry about something else, so I get mad about the state of the house instead. Then I pick up all the things, because then I will have exerted control over at least one aspect of our lives. Just before I cleaned all the things is when it became obvious that Link was not going to be going back to school this morning. He’s entering is fourth week of absence and a part of me despairs if we’ll ever get back on track. But the mix of fatigue, brain fog, ongoing coughing fits, and social anxiety meant that keeping him home was the right thing to do. It wasn’t what I wanted. I wanted him to be well enough so that we could reclaim the normal patterns of our lives. Instead I’m homeschooling using assignments that we collect from teachers in the after school hours.

Then there are the small evidences that I am not tracking as I should, because I’m recovering too. I picked up Patch from school and noticed the ski lift tag on his jacket. That was when I remembered that today was the fifth grade field trip to go skiing. I looked at my son in his light jacket with no gloves and the first thing I asked was whether he’d been warm enough. He was, we were blessed with a beautiful day and he was hot from exertion rather than cold. Further conversation showed that Patch is firmly re-established in his school patterns. He’s back in the swing after missing two weeks. This is good.

The first thing I did this morning was update my to do list. It was all red because everything on it was something I’d planned to do last week, or the week before. So I rescheduled, pushed forward, canceled. I whittled it away until it was only too much, instead of way too much. I know I can’t get it all done, particularly since there is the huge unwritten task of helping Link get on top of his work and normalize his life again. But today I hit the ground running and accomplished an astonishing amount of things. I do not think it is coincidence that I have a very effective day on the day after I put exercise back into my life. So I put exercise into this day too. Because I need a day like this one tomorrow as well.

Kiki called just as I was finishing my exercise walk. She told me all about the communication she has been doing with professors and other administrators at her college. She figured out she wants to go for the more rigorous BFA because it will allow her to focus more tightly on illustration. She’s also found the paperwork she’s going to need to do in order to set up an internship for next summer. As I talked to her I realized that Kiki was also doing a really good job of finessing her mom to make sure she got to arrange her summer the way that she wants to. It was really good to hear the ways that she is taking control of her life and making plans for what comes next.

I’m told it is going to snow tomorrow. That makes me a little sad. The sunshine and fifty degree weather has me feeling like we’re coming out of the long winter of sickness. I would like it to be spring. I’d like to be caught up on all the things and hitting our deadlines instead of endlessly adjusting them. But I’ll take the snow if we can just have a week’s worth of routine work and catch up on all the things.

Returning Home from ConFusion

By / January 20, 2014

It is Monday. I’ve returned from ConFusion and none of the worries which kept me awake Wednesday night have come to pass. I hope that someday my brain will accept that my departure does not create dire consequences, but this trip was not that someday.

“How was your trip?” My mom asked after we walked in the door this afternoon. It is not an unreasonable question considering that she traveled 800 miles and spent five days watching my kids so that I could go. The shortest answer is “good” but that is an unsatisfying answer. The next shortest answer which is also still accurate is “Not easy to summarize.”

This was a trip that Howard and I chose rather than one we were offered. It was one I knew I wanted a year ago and that I’ve put effort into being able to afford. The cost of the hotel and airfare are part of the expense, but more critical, Howard and I had to adjust our thinking in such a way that we allowed ourselves a trip whose primary purpose was personal enjoyment rather than business. We are very fortunate that our chosen vacation trip looks very similar to a business trip. I think this means that we’ve chosen the right business.

We chose ConFusion because last year it collected a large contingent of people we really like. This year it was the same. I reconnected with long-time friends and made new friends. I even made one new old friend which is a story that requires a blog post of its very own. We flew below the radar, not announcing that we were coming until just before, because we weren’t certain we could until just before. The fantastic Con Com and programming staff gave us good things to do and discuss. When all was said and done, I had nine items of programming and each one added good things to my experience. Looking back, I realize that I miss the fan-facing interactions which come from us spending time in the dealer’s room, but I am so very glad that we had one show where we had time to think “what do I feel like doing right now?” instead of feeling pressure to be “on” every minute of every day. Howard and I love the GoH gigs, but we are always conscious that our hours there must belong to the convention and its guests. These hours belonged to us and I liked that. I like even more how similarly we spent those hours to how we spend hours when we owe them to someone else. That is a good thing for us to know and I think it will increase our enjoyment of future conventions

I don’t know when we’ll be able to do another show the way we did ConFusion. I’d certainly like to be able to afford it again, but I have to do the math carefully. We certainly can’t do more than one per year, probably not even that often. This trip meant a lot to me, which is probably why the anxieties were out in full force on the night before I left. Yet here I am on the other side and there is not much about the trip that I would change. Given my choice I would have skipped the part where I was coughing and hoarse during the whole trip. I felt fine, but sounded awful and I worried about transmitting germs to others. Beyond that, anything I imagine different would have to displace something good rather than displace something bad. This trip was beginning-to-end a true joy.

But now I need to rest and see if I can convince my voice to come back. I appear to have left it behind in Michigan.

Using My Design Skills

By / January 9, 2014

It was a very design-y day for me. I created a new iteration for LOTA, which meant putting margin art into place and scooting things around to make spaces for footnotes. Then I print out a new copy and hand it back to Howard who is working on filling up the remaining white spaces.

Howard made some critique notes for Strength of Wild Horses, so I applied those and created another iteration of that too. I really wanted to send it off to the printer tomorrow, but I think the earliest possible is Monday. I have to walk away from design projects and come back to them in order to see what I am missing. I also have to look at things both on paper and on screen. I see different issues in the different formats.

When my brain was worn out on SWH, I did some rough layout work for Massively Parallel. This pass is mostly to slap strips into place and come up with a page count. We’re hoping to have this book in print before the big summer conventions, so we have no time to dawdle. Howard needs the page count so he knows what space he has to work with for the bonus story.

Then it was time to pick up kids, help kids with homework, and provide dinner. Except I spent 90 minutes watching episodes of Community because my brain was too fried for focus. The good news is that when I re-emerged the kids settled into their homework and they were content with a frozen food dinner.

I had some time to spare while I was supervising homework, so I finished reading through the submissions for the challenge coin PDF. This also required my design brain because I have to figure out how to fit all of these different stories into a cohesive document that is readable. Fortunately I think I’ve got it figured out, now I just need to look up some examples of what I have in mind to make sure that I do it well. Some of the stories made me laugh, others brought me to tears. This is a worthy project and I feel honored to be part of it.

It was a long and thinky day. Now I need to go to bed so I can have another one like it tomorrow.

Working on Strength of Wild Horses

By / January 7, 2014

I stood at our family room table sorting pieces of paper into piles. Each paper represented a person who supported my Kickstarter project. Each pile was a pledge level. It was interesting and humbling to see all those packing sheets spread out: support made tangible. I recognized many names and didn’t recognize many more. Some of the people wrote little notes into the “other notes” field I put into the survey forms. As I sorted, I read the notes. Truly this project keeps on giving to me even when it is using lots of my time and energy. That is the best sort of project, where the work itself is its own reward. The future is uncertain, I can’t guarantee what I’ll be able to do or if I’ll ever get another project like this one. That’s okay. I have this one and 300 piece of paper which means that 300 people get to have it too.

The point of the sorting was to make sure that I have all the names to go into the book and to get the correct counts for cards to order. Now those papers will sit in a file box waiting until I have books to send. Creating the book is my task now. I’ve been working on it.

Strength of Wild Horses has a cover. I’m most of the way through placing the images and interior text. I hope to send it to print very soon. Then I’ll create the postcards, note cards, bookplates, and prints. After that, there is waiting for books to arrive. I’m looking forward to all of it except the waiting part.

Finding My Work Brain

By / January 2, 2014 / 2 Comments

I found my business brain this morning, which was a relief, because I haven’t been able to access focused business thoughts since some time before Christmas. I think the holidays exude a brain fog and encourage me to step outside of all my usual patterns. Which is a good thing. Breaks generally are, however it is a relief to find my rhythm again. I pretty much only have today before I hit weekend, more family visits, and taking Kiki back to school. January 6 our normal schedule begins in earnest.

I’ve spent lots of time with family in the past few weeks. Far more than I have for a long time. It was lovely to discover that seeing my extended family was relaxing and enjoyable rather than adding stress. This makes clear exactly how stressed I was for the prior eighteen months when visitors always added stress. I’m ready to engage socially again. Just in time, since I’m headed out to ConFusion in only two weeks. They’ve given me programming that I’m excited to be part of. I’ll detail that in a different post.

For today I plowed through accounting work and shipping work. Hopefully tomorrow I’ll be able to find my design brain for a while and make progress on Strength of Wild Horses and on preparatory work for Massively Parallel. After that I need to find my editing brain and get to work on the challenge coin pdf. Huh, it sounds like I’ve got all sorts of brains buried in the clutter around my house, which creates an amusing mental picture and accurately describes how things feel.

Tracking All The Things

By / December 18, 2013 / 1 Comment

My brain tracks things. It does it automatically, sometimes without my consent. I’m not sure when it started. It is possible that I’ve always done it. I know for certain I’ve been at it for at least the past decade. This capability is, mostly, very useful. It is the reason that I am able to run so many projects in parallel. It is the reason that Howard and I hit deadlines and one of the reasons we’re able to make a living at what we do. I love my ability to track, but there are times when it is problematic.

Just last week I was out to breakfast with my friend Mary. She told me about some upcoming tricky scheduling between a work event and a family event where she had to travel extensively in between. During the conversation, I felt my tracking brain click on and I knew that some part of my brain would be paying attention to whether Mary was able to make her tight connections. There is no point to me tracking that information. Mary is a grown up. These are her events, not mine. And there is nothing that I can do to affect the outcome. My life would be more contented and less stressed if I could spend that day happily oblivious to Mary’s travels. And I’ll probably spend most of that day not thinking about it. But at least a couple of times, my brain will ping “I wonder if Mary made her deadline.” and then I’ll go check.

This happens to me every day. My brain pings me about a dozen things that it has chosen to track. Was there a follow up to that internet kerfluffle? Did so-and-so manage to make that souffle? Don’t we need to start scheduling that meeting for that project which is three months down the road, but we need to start now? I haven’t seen a schedule from AnyCon yet, I should email and check. I’m constantly thinking of things before the people, whose jobs the things are, have had a chance to think of them. I do my best to reign it in and make sure that my tracking does not adversely impact others. The good news is that while I can’t stop my brain from pinging me, I am not compelled to follow through on the pings. I can answer a ping with “That’s not really my business” and move on with my day. That thing is likely to ping me again until the deadline is passed, but each time I can dismiss it or act on it as seems appropriate and logical.

Unfortunately in the parenting arena things get murkier. It is easy to see that my friend’s travel plans are not my job. But what about my child’s homework? Obviously the child needs to do the work. Obviously it is my job to teach kids how to face homework and get it done. Obviously young children need an adult to help them track and teach them how to track. Obviously children under stress need more help than usual. But there is an area where things are much less obvious. I have to figure out at what age I step back and let the kids track their own things. The ages differ according to child, previous experience, and ongoing stress level. I’m really good at stepping in and giving lots more help. I’m much less good at stepping back. If I know what the assignments are, I want my kids to snap to it and get it all done because then those assignments will stop pinging in my brain. What my sixteen year old needs right now is space to sort and track his own assignments. He needs to find his own ways of getting things done. His ways are not my ways and that makes my tracking brain crazy. It pings me all the time about his work, and my job right now is to tell it to shut up, because tracking is his job, not mine.

The good news is that eventually my tracking brain will recalibrate. My college kid is home now and my tracking brain is treating her like any other visiting adult and not trying to track all of her tasks and things. Though I don’t ask for details about the work she needs to complete while she is here. Details are hooks on which my tracking brain gets caught. On the whole I suspect that this aspect of how my brain works is outside of normal, but it is more of a benefit in my life than a detriment, so I’ve just learned to manage it.

Strength of Wild Horses, Funded and Beautiful

By / December 1, 2013 / 2 Comments


They arrived in a priority mail envelope heavily reinforced with cardboard and bubble wrap. Thirty two hand-drawn illustrations for Strength of Wild Horses. I was not here to open the package, Howard was, so he got to see them first. This is fine, since it is my desk they are currently resting on. I’m the one who is going to get to move these images around on the pages, placing words, and making it all come together into a book. I get to do that because the project funded. That statement deserves repetition and bold text.
The Strength of Wild Horses project is now funded.
I’d have put the text in all upper caps, but that is too much like angry shouting. I feel like happy shouting, but I wouldn’t want any of you to feel yelled at. But you can click on the link and see it all funded.

See Amy, Kari, and Evan? This is how they’ll appear on the back cover of the book. Flying together into an adventure. Seeing them makes me happy. Holding the final book will make both Angela and I very happy. It gets to happen because over 250 people agreed that Amy needs a new adventure.

There are four days left before the funding closes. My emphasis for these last four days will be on spreading the word even further, because every Kickstarter creator I’ve ever known has people who say they’re sad that they missed it. Next week I’ll be trying to get the best possible images I can of the originals. It is hard, because there is an iridescent quality to Angela’s pencil work which can’t be replicated by printing. I’m going to do my best.

This Kickstarter project has felt like a gift. Over and over again I have been moved to tears by the kindness of friends who blogged, tweeted, shared, linked, commented, emailed, messaged, and liked. People spread the word much farther than I could have done by myself. That is a gesture of trust and friendship that I will always treasure. So many people believe in this project and what it can be. They also believe that Angela and I can deliver something worthwhile. I leaf through the pages of originals and know that Angela has truly delivered. Now I’ve got to complete my part. I need to arrange words and pictures. I’ve got to collect order information from my backers, most especially those names which will be printed in the book. I’ve got to prepare the files, send the book to print, and be ready when it comes back. Each backer is a person to whom I’ve made a promise and I’m excited to fulfill those promises. The closing of the Kickstarter is a beginning, not an ending.

Bits and Pieces

By / November 20, 2013 / 4 Comments

Kiki called home yesterday. Apparently she saw that I’d said we assumed all was well with her since we figured she’d call if something was wrong. So she called just to chat. Mostly she told me about her classes and the fun things going on. I watched her talk and realized, again, that I miss her. I don’t miss her the way that some of my friends miss their recently-moved-out adult children. It isn’t like part of my heart is somewhere else, or that we have a hole here at home. I miss her because she is fun to be around and she makes me laugh. It is going to be fun to have her home for Thanksgiving next week. As I was listening to her, I got a strong sense that she is in the stage of life where all things are possible. She could choose so many different things and is just beginning to see what they all are. This is different than my stage where I’ve got 20 years invested in my current paths. I could choose something very different, but there is lots I’d have to give up. Kiki’s stage is wonderful and I’m so glad she gets to have it.

Patch helped me with the postcards again this year. It has become an annual tradition. He and I sit together putting stamps and labels onto the postcards that thank all the people who have ordered things from our store this year. He talks to me about things as we work. Often they are comments on the places where the postcards are going, or thoughts from school, or from the games he’s been playing lately. Patch is pretty good company and the cards are all ready to go out tomorrow.

Howard had a depressive episode earlier this week. He tweeted about it quite a bit as it was ongoing. Being open about the depression is therapeutic for him, it is also a small part of what we can do to de-stigmatize mental health issues so that more people seek help when they need it. I was thinking about it and realized that I should probably write up a post about the other half of the equation. Howard can talk about depression. I can write about what it is like to be married to a depressed person and the things loved ones can do both to help and to keep themselves healthy. It gets difficult.

This week I was worn down by the never ending tide of small tasks which I do for other people. I have a record keeping job for our scout troop. I’ve had it for awhile and my whole mode of operation has been to just quietly keep the records, because me doing this job allows the part of scouting which I think is actually valuable: which is that boys get to have growth experiences. We just had significant leadership turn over in our scout troop and suddenly I’m the one who knows how everything works. Instead of being invisible, I’m now the expert in a system that is confusing and labrynthine. On top of that was Link’s ever revolving list of homework. I’m helping him track it and get it done. For each assignment I’m torn. Do I help here so that he can focus his learning energy there. Or do I stand back and let him struggle with all aspects of the assignments. Am I helping too much? It just hardly seems fair that he spends so much of his school hours being variously confused because he missed hearing or tracking some small piece of information. Except it is even harder for me to track the info since I’m not in the classes and have to go off of things Link tells me and occasional emails from teachers. I’m probably helping too much.

The shipment of calendars arrived today. This means I need to shift into shipping preparations. I’m going to have to unpack that part of my brain and figure out what the steps need to be. Tomorrow.

The Kickstarter is slowly progressing. I’m grateful for each person who finds their way to it and decides to pledge. I need to make slow but steady efforts for the next 10 days and then a big push for the last day. 67% funded right now.

We had adventures in healthcare coverage this week when one of Gleek’s prescriptions was ten times more expensive than usual. Our fear was that the new healthcare legislation had changed our coverage and the medicine was no longer covered. The good news is that our plan is grandfathered. It can’t be changed by new laws. The price change was simply because Gleek maxed out her prescription plan for this year and we’ll have to pay full price instead of just a copay until January. It is also possible that our plan being grandfathered is a bad thing because it means our plan still doesn’t cover any sort of mental healthcare. We’ve spent quite a lot on mental health this past year and it has all been out of pocket. I don’t see that number going down next year either. So now I have a homework assignment to try to figure out if it is to our advantage to stick with the current coverage or to change to something new.

I used to be a person who started thinking about Christmas right around Halloween and who had most of it purchased before Thanksgiving. Now I’m a person who deliberately avoids thinking about Christmas until after Thanksgiving. Too many other things in my head.

Thanksgiving, now that I am looking forward to. The internet always goes to sleep during that weekend, which means that work won’t accumulate. Instead I’ll get to spend time with my extended family. Kiki will be in town. And my sister and her family will be arriving from Germany to spend a few months in the US. Also, there will be pie.

Saturday’s Different Priorities

By / November 16, 2013 / 2 Comments

For today I put away my list. I did not try to keep myself on track. At bedtime I decided on one thing I would do first and then I would just do whatever followed naturally afterward. I’ve discovered that it is important to give my task managing brain a rest in this way. It spends so much time in overdrive. So my day began with dropping Link off for his Pokemon League meeting. Then, since it was nearby, I picked up a prescription. I was in the car anyway, so I decided to head over to the storage units and bag up the garbage there. All the plastic pallet wrapping and paper filled two 55 gallon garbage bags. I shoved the eight wooden pallets into one unit and canceled the other. Job half done. Of course then my car was full of garbage. I drove over to the warehouse to pick up the pile of garbage from there, and then took all of it to the dump. All of these were things on my list. They were things that have been making me feel stressed because I didn’t know when I would have time to get them done. I still have to figure out how and where to haul eight pallets, but I definitely feel better.

When I returned home, I continued my meander by spending time in my former shipping room. I sorted and stacked the last of the business things which need to go to the warehouse. I dismantled two more shelf units which also need to go. By next week that room needs to be ready so I can set it up as a place for Kiki to come stay during the Holidays.

The point of this is not the things I did, but the fact that allowing myself to ignore the list gave me permission to sort my day according to what most wanted and needed to do rather than by what logic dictated. If my brain had decided to spend the whole day curled up watching television, that would have been okay too. Right now it is afternoon and I feel more relaxed than I have all week. In a little while I’ll need to look at my lists again, because there may be things on those lists that will turn into catastrophes between now and Monday if I ignore them completely.

The Busy Season

By / November 14, 2013

Tis the season when I could use an auxiliary brain or two in order to keep track of all my things. This season is always heralded by the opening of calendar pre-orders which usher in the holiday shipping season in our store. I’ve got as stack of 300 invoice sitting on my desk waiting for calendars to arrive so that I can ship them. I’ve got twenty more orders which can be shipped now, the top task for tomorrow morning.

Or it would be the top task, but I’m still putting the finishing touches on the warehouse move. I’ve got to clear out those storage units and buy fire extinguishers so that we can pass the safety inspection for the business license in the new location.

Only I’ve also got three guest posts that I’m excited to write and I really want a few hours of head space in which I can get them done. The host blogs have set me some really cool topics and I want to turn notes into writing.

Of course there is still all the kid stuff. Homework does not stop. I don’t have to do it, I end up helping the kids remember to do it, and making extra trips to the store for ingredients. Or groceries. The kids want to eat every single day.

It all adds up. At least this year I have zero involvement with the church Christmas party, for which I am very grateful. December is just not a good time for me to have more things to do.

This morning was glorious. I was at the top of my game, knocking down To Do items one after the other. I did all the things. Around 2pm my day abruptly shifted into serious annoyance and grouchiness. It is entirely possible that this was related to the fact that my “doing all the things” somehow failed to include adequate nutrition. Howard fed me and things got a bit better. But I’m still here at the end of the day and despite being super-human this morning, I still have an oppresively long list of things for tomorrow.

I miss having spaces in my day. I know from experience that I’ll have some during Thanksgiving weekend. The internet kind of goes to sleep for those days and my work load lightens. Then things won’t be calm again until around December 23 when people stop ordering because the things won’t arrive in time for gift giving. Deep breath. I can do this.