It’s been a wild couple of weeks here in Babytown and work time has been hard to come by. So, for that matter, have been brain cells so I haven’t exactly been on my A game. But we’ve had a couple of days of calm so I’m taking the luxury of deluding myself that it’ll be nothing but smooth sailing for the rest of her entire life from this point on.
NaNoWriMo is taking over my life as it does every year at this time and they’ll be posts about that soon enough. But I know that once we get into NaNoWriMo that usually takes us right into the end of the year and I wanted to reflect a little on the last 10 months for a moment first.
Here’s what I’m finding to be the craziest thing about this year: If you’d ask me how much work I’m doing compared to past years, I’d freely admit that I’m getting nothing done. I used to work a 10 hour day at least 5 days a week and usually worked at least 3 hours or more on the weekends and now I’m lucky if I get in 10 hours of work over a 2 week period and that’s not exaggerating. It’s just a fact that I am literally working less. When I get to my computer it’s just so overwhelming how much I have to do and I feel like I’m in this constant state of putting out fires for things I should have done last week but didn’t have time. I’m always in this hyperdrive state where I’m just trying to get enough done that I still have a career of some kind and that I’m not burning bridges or wasting all the work I’ve done to get to this point.
But, when I write it all out, I’ve actually gotten a surprising amount done this year. So far in 2013, I’ve finished a major project for my company, rewrote two entire e-commerce book from scratch (one of which I’ll need to totally rewrite AGAIN but let’s not dwell on that), completed several big eBay commissions, and wrote a new play (details on that to follow) and I’ve still got two and a half months left.
Oh and that whole teaching a small human literally everything about the entire world. I did that too. Turns out, it’s kind of time consuming.
How does that compare to a normal year? Obviously I’m doing less of the little things: listing MUCH less eBay, writing far less words, and letting all the daily maintenance tasks (like my websites for instance) fall by the wayside which I’m sure I’ll pay for in horrible ways later when things epically fail. But I’ll be darned if I’m not still getting things done, big things, and getting to check them off my list and that is very good since life will never be less busy than it is right now ever again.
Of course, day to day, I still feel like a total failure but I think that’s just what life is like sometimes. You can’t cut the number of hours you worked by a power of ten and not have there be collateral damage. But, though it’s hard to remember this when I’m looking at my inbox and just want to crawl under my desk and cry, I do seem to be getting better at using what time I do have efficiently and productively and I think that’s making a big difference. Looking back, I wasted a lot of time before but there’s literally no use in worrying about that now. I just have to make the best of what time I do have to work and see what that gets me.
As for my paired down writing goal for the year, I am actually slightly ahead. In fact, as I write this on the evening of 10/12, I am just over 16k away from hitting my goal for the year and I’ve decided to try my best to hit it by the end of the month. Not only would this give me some writing confidence going into NaNoWriMo, it would also mean everything I get done in my busiest months, November and December, is gravy since I’ll have already hit my writing goal for the year. And if I win NaNoWriMo, well, I’ll have ended the year with an extra 50% over my target word count.
Here’s where I stand three days before the midpoint of October:
84,476, 84%.
I’m at 6k ish for October right now but if I write another 16k before the end of the month I’ll have accomplished that warm-up half-NaNo I tried to do back in July.
What all this has taught me is that it isn’t really how much time you have, it’s what you do with it that matters. I don’t feel like I’m sacrificing any time with the little one but I’m still managing to get some things done that are important to me and my company and I’m thrilled about that. The final hurdle is getting myself to remember this when I’m feeling low about getting “nothing” done and remember that I’m accomplishing more than it seems day to day.
Do you find yourself struggling with feeling like you’re accomplished nothing when the facts say otherwise? How do you get yourself over this mental flaw?
Hillary DePiano is a playwright, fiction and non-fiction writer who loves writing of all kinds except for writing bios like this.
