Category: Writing

Well, it’s mid-October, which means it’s high time I sat down and reviewed my work accomplishments for the last quarter, rather than sit and bitch about how hard it is to be a mom like I usually do. I dug up the list of goals from the last quarter to see what I did and didn’t manage to do. Here it is:

Writing

We talked about what I want to do during the next three months (2 1/2 actually, since we’re already midway through June), so now it’s time to figure out how to do all that stuff, or at least part of it.

I’ve spent a lot of time the last several days in the glider nursing Sam. She’s feeding pretty well now, going for 20 minutes or more at a time. That means plenty of time for me to sit with my handy laptop and do some work. Of course, Sam isn’t my only child. I’ve also got Cassie, and she’s not going to keep keep still and be quiet every time I sit down to nurse Sam, so I’m going to have to be able to work while entertaining her as well. And I’ve still got to do the housework, the gardening, errands and cooking, and let’s not forget dedicated playtime with both children because they certainly need it. So my work plan needs to be loose and flexible to accomodate everything else going on in my life.

When I started doing the Fly Lady thing, I got into the habit of breaking my day into three routines – morning, afternoon, and evening. The morning routine was dedicated to basic household chores. The evening routine was dedicated to preparing for bed and getting up the next morning. The afternoon routine was dedicated to my work, playing with Cassie, exercise and any outings we had scheduled to do. I can still use the morning and evening routines, although I have to allow for stopping to nurse as Sam needs it. It’s the afternoon routine that needs to change. That’s the bulk of the day for me, and I’m doing a lot of nursing during that time.

The best option I can think of is to change the afternoon routine to a feeding routine. In other words, work gets done while I nurse and I’m at the laptop. When I’m not nursing, then I play with Cassie or we do yard work and other chores. Seems simple, right? I just have to schedule what happens during the feedings. The first feeding of the day gets devoted to this blog entry, for instance. The next goes to handling e-mail. The one after that to doing graphics work, and after that to writing a critique for my writer’s group. Then we start the whole cycle all over again, except for the blog entry since that only needs to be done once a day. All these tasks are what I consider “interruptible” tasks, meaning Cassie can come chat with me or ask for stories, etc., while I’m working on them. The “uninterruptible” work, i.e. drawing and writing, is still going to be done during Cassie’s nap time. I can write while I nurse. I cannot write while trying to answer the never-ending questions of a three-year old.

In between feedings, my time goes to Cassie, Sam, and the house. In the evenings I throw Michael into that mix too. If this all sounds crazy, like I’m trying to shove too much to do in a very cramped period of time, consider this. We all have more to do than we have time to do it in. Everybody has a list as long as their arm of things they need to accomplish each day and nobody every really finishes that list. I’m just someone who knows that by having a plan, I have a much better chance of accomplishing at least some of the things on my list, which is a lot better than doing none of the things on my list.

Anyway, feeding time is over. My schedule says it’s time for me to move on.

I’m giving myself a break today on the blog entry and am simply posting the list of work goals I put together for the next three months. I like to come up with a list each year of things I want to do and then each quarter break that list down into what I can do in three months. I’m still refining the process. I’m better at planning out three months than a full year, and I still pick too many goals for each quarter, but it’s a way to track my progress as I work, and it helps give me direction. So here are the goals for the next three months, broken down by category:

Writing

Cassie didn’t wake up until 7 AM yesterday. Today she’s up again at 6. Yesterday actually went pretty calmly for me. Today I’m back to wondering if I’m going to blow a gasket from handling a cranky three-year-old all day long. It amazes me how much difference that one hour to myself makes.

Anyway, today’s topic – can Mommy make money? I quit working outside the home about five years or more ago. Basically, I hated my job. It was tedious, most of the people I worked with were too stupid to live, and I worked 80 hours but only got paid for 40. Still that pay wasn’t bad – forty-two thousand a year for building briefings and running a conference room that made me want to tear my hair out. I had to quit. I had reached a point where just the thought of going into work made me want to puke. To this day, fluorescent lighting and cubicles send me rushing to the john.

Now I’m at home, where the work is still frustrating, but more enjoyable (yes, believe it or not, I am having a good time being my usual bitchy self). The problem is, I’m not making very much money. I had hoped that after five years of working on my own, I’d have figured out a way to make at least five thousand a year, but I’m not even making two grand at this point. Somehow, I’ve got to turn that around.

The question is, how? With child number two almost here, I know my work schedule is going to be damned tricky. I’ve set up a workstation at the glider so I can handle e-mail and write while I work. I should be able to do graphics as well, since I’ve got my Wacom table hooked up to the laptop. I did a lot of writing by hand when I was nursing Cassie (all of it porn!), but it all stayed in the three-ring binder I was scribbling in. None of it ever saw the light of day, and none of it ever made me money.

What that writing did do was get me into the habit of writing on a daily basis, and I’m hoping that this time around I can get into the habit of doing productive, money making work while nursing Samantha. I just have to see if I can nurse, handle a three-year-old, and write or draw at the same time. I also have to find a market for whatever work I turn out. Should be easy, right?

My other option is to do the Fly Lady thing of working in fifteen minute blocks throughout the day – fifteen minutes of writing, fifteen minutes of cleaning, fifteen minutes of playing with the kids, fifteen minutes of break, fifteen minutes of drawing, fifteen minutes of whatever, and keep rotating through the things I want to do for the first several weeks after Sam is born. I have no clue if it’ll work, but I’ll give it a try. In fact, that’s what I’m doing right now – taking fifteen minutes to write this blog entry. I’m down to my last 2 1/2 minutes, and it seems to be working at the moment. The real test will come in the next few months.

Time’s up. Gotta go. Have a bitchy, y’all.