Summer slump and life changes

Did I mention that I have a new job?

The job is awesome. It is closer to my house, for one, so I can (and have, once) bike in. I get a bike stipend if I do it enough times as congratulations for offsetting my carbon footprint. This is pretty much my jam. It takes me five minutes instead of 45 to get to the office by car. The amount of energy I have without an hour and a half of car time every day is stupendous. The job itself involves doing something I love and that I am very passionate about. This is not to say my previous job didn’t involve interesting things that I was passionate about, but I am more excited about this stuff as a rule.

That said, changing jobs is definitely a taxing experience. There are all sorts of things I don’t understand about what I’m supposed to be doing here. There’s this weird system of tracking hours on all of the projects I have. There are all of the projects I have. There was the sudden rush to finish all of the things at my old job and now there is a sudden rush to know all of the new things at this job. Part of my day every day is just shrugging. And emailing people asking desperately for enlightenment.

Plus, it’s summer. Literally birthdays every other weekend that I can’t miss and so much tempting hiking and kayaking to do.

Given all that it has been incredibly difficult to focus on anything to do with my writing.

Ideally I don’t have time to get bogged down in the minutiae of my day-to-day existence. Eating? Working? Pffft. There is a book I want out by winter. Realistically? I don’t have the time to not get bogged down in these details. Writing, sadly, still does not pay the bills. It will probably never pay the bills, at least not until I am pleasantly retired. (And at that point aren’t the bills still being paid by the work of the day job? So yeah, maybe never.)

That said, I spent last night typing up some of the words I have managed to scratch out over something like the past month. There weren’t a lot of them, but glacial progress is still progress. And I feel connected to the WIP for the first time in weeks. Now it’s just a matter of deepening that connection and climbing back on the wagon.

The advantage, too, is that I have all this aforementioned time freed up from the lack of commuting. Which is like…the best. A changing schedule means my normal writing times have also gotten rearranged, but once I can get that figured out I am sure that I will have more consistent time for this book. Which should breathe life into my stalled out publishing timeline.

And, happy thing, I’m starting the process to get a cover for this book a little early, meaning now! This is going to be a great thing from a promotional perspective, because I can use it for cover reveals and giveaways. So be looking out for updates on that!

It’s going to be great, folks. I just have to be patient. And stop spending an inordinate amount of time playing in the sun on the weekends, maybe.