Drunken Owls and Other Delights

OOF. The last three days were tough at work. Two mid-shifts (including on the 4th, which was surprisingly not busy) and a closure last night that took a hell of a lot out of me. I may not have been in the best of moods for the first half of that shift, mainly due to Thwarted Plans (needing to finish open-ended bookkeeping, trying to keep the front end in line, and going to a super late lunch break on time) and Irritations (vocal interruptions by others which if you know me annoys the piss out of me) plus being hangry. By the time 8pm rolled around it was finally much more sedate and I chose to eff it and roll with the punches instead. Suffice it to say I slept like crap last night as my brain was still in ARRRRGH mode and I ended up dreaming that I'd been fired for a really stupid reason.

ANYWAY. Today's my day off and I've done little except update my blogs and do the laundry, and I have no problems with that. Maybe if I have the inclination I'll finally get off my butt and do some work on MU4 again, and maybe think about what my tandem novel project will be.

Here's to hoping that next week's schedule is nowhere near as stressful. Thankfully my next two days at work are easy opens!

I have to say I'm quite happy to be back on the whiteboard schedule. There are days when it's tough to squeeze in everything I want to do, but the key here is to make the time. Another key is to have an idea of what I want to write about that day instead of coming in cold.

I can easily do my Daily Words within twenty minutes or so, and I can squeeze that in during slow moments during the Day Job. (And there's rarely a day when I truly am going flat-out with no break. Even when I do, I can still at least start it and finish it up later.) There have been a few days where I've been lazy and getting to it close to last minute, but I'm getting better at that.

The blog entries can be a bit of a bear, especially if I'm not quite sure what I want to talk about, but I think that's another key I have to focus on: not every blog entry needs to be an essay, it can also be a short moment of thought. I'm trying to mix it up a bit, so when I decide to up the number of entries per week, I'm okay with writing something of varying lengths.

The weekends have also been scheduled: my personal LJ posts will pretty much continue to show up here on Sundays until further notice. I'm also expanding the Daily Words so I can work on them at this time as well, so they truly are daily.

But one major change for the weekend is on Saturdays, in which the whiteboard says "Art". Before, this usually meant me breaking out my pens and drawing something somewhere, but I've decided that this is now going to encompass more creative works, including photography and music. In particular, I'd like to use Saturdays as the day I can start creating more book covers, and focus a bit more seriously on my photography as well.

Again, now that I'm on the back end of a superlong insanely complex project, I feel the need to get my act together and move forward the best way I know how. Which means right now, while juggling between this, the Day Job and Real Life, I really need to start making some solid long term plans. And lucky for me, I like making these plans.

Keepin' busy, but in a good way.

Like I've said elsewhere, I'm feeling twitchy. And when I feel twitchy, that means I'm wasting time somewhere that could be better utilized. Not to say I'm about to ban fun and goofing off of course. Just that my time management could use some tweaking. Must look into that.

In other news, I now have two avenues of finite self-promotion open to me that I need to follow up on within the next few weeks. One is a website ADoS is available at, and the other is my hometown newspaper. Which means I should probably get my ass in gear and write a decent press release for myself! :p

Long term: Thinking about what I should be working on in 2016. I mean, aside from releasing The Persistence of Memories and The Balance of Light. I've got a few non-Mendaihu Universe projects that I'm thinking of releasing, that I could start working on. Also thinking of what new stories I could begin as well. Am I going to be a Stephen King and release eight books in a year? Heh, probably not, but if I can do more than one, that's cool with me. We'll see.

Woo, vacation coming in less than a week!! We'll be flying out of SFO on Saturday and across the briny blue to the UK for Worldcon and much sightseeing, and I'm totally looking forward to it. A and I both have a list of places to visit--the many museums, the usual tourist traps, and of course a few Beatles-related points of interest. And I'd be kicking myself if I didn't spend two weeks in London and not visit the famed Abbey Road, right? We even picked up a few tickets to see a play at one of their many theaters there. I'm really looking forward to this trip, gonna be a lot of fun!

Looking forward to Worldcon as well...it's going to be one where I know quite a few people who are also going to be there, so it'll be a lot of fun to stop and say hi to everyone! Interestingly enough I haven't yet read through the entire con schedule yet (partly due to the fact that I completely forgot to do so until a few days ago), but I've come to the conclusion that cons work even better for me if I don't overplan it. There are always a few definites as far as panels are concerned, but keeping my plans relatively fluid means I'm less concerned about possibly missing things and more open-minded about panels I stumble in on at the last minute. I've discovered new books and writers that way too!

So yes...this weekend has basically been all about the planning. Getting a shuttle to the airport, getting London transit cards, buying travel books, mapping out a schedule, working out a to-do list, stopping mail delivery for a bit, and so on. All the usual steps one takes pre-vacation. And now I'm at the point where I'm making a mental list of what I'll be bringing on board the plane. This is one of those rare moments where we can bring a carry-on with us but not an additional bag to be put overhead. Not complaining about that too much...I'm sure I can figure out a way to arrange the necessities in my satchel--you know, the tablet, the mp3 player, book to read, notebook for writing, possible change of clothes (you know how it is), camera, and all within the confines of the space they're giving us. It'll be tricky, but I think I can pull it off.


In other news...what have I been up to the last few weeks? Aside from a three-day cold that annoyed the hell out of me, I've been keeping busy. I'm not as far along with Walk in Silence as I'd like to be, and I think it's because I've hit a slow muddy segment that will most likely need to be heavily rewritten. I'm at the point of why the hell am I writing this anyway, and is it really worth the work? second-guessing, which is annoying. The words don't exactly suck, but I'm perhaps at a point where I'm getting bored with the project. Or that I'm at a point I don't want to write for some reason and would rather not deal with it. In other words, I've got the writer's typical mid-project don't wanna's.

If anything, I'm going to utilize this vacation for two things: a brief break from the writing to get my thoughts back on track, and a distraction to plan what fiction project I'm going to work on next.


So yes...going to be a busy week of last minute plans, packing, and everything else under the sun. I may even post something here or at WordPress before I leave, if time permits. We'll see.