Sandra Tayler's Blog, page 26

Signs of Being Busy

It appears that the last time I was clear headed enough to sort through my email was before Thanksgiving. So many unanswered messages in there. I’ve been spending every waking minute either on family things or shipping work. The other day I tweeted:

I could do all the things if the things would just hold still for a while.

The shipping is stable and simple, there’s just a lot of it. It is the family stuff which is all comprised of moving targets.

The last of the international packages will go out tomorrow.

Comments are open on the original post at onecobble.com.

Today’s Victories

All of my kids went to school on time. Bonus points for them being happy as they departed.

3 out of 4 kids ate breakfast.

We set Howard up to continue sketching in books.

Kiki and I teamed up to send out over 100 international packages. We made them and dropped them at the post office without incident.

All of my kids stayed at school for the entire school day and I got no phone calls from schools during those hours.

Gleek sat down with me to talk about a school assignment that is causing her major stress. It was a conversation she did not want to have, yet she stayed with me and talked with me, instead of picking a fight with me and stomping off. We now have a plan.

We put up the Christmas tree and it has lights on it. Ornaments can come later.

It was a good day, but one with very little time to rest. Up next: going to bed so that tomorrow can be another good day.

Comments are open on the original post at onecobble.com.

Shipment Delivery: Complete

It was all lined up. Delivery of books and slipcases on Monday. I had a crew to help. Tuesday I’d help Howard sign book covers and then fetch Kiki home for Thanksgiving in the afternoon. Wednesday would be shipping prep and Thanksgiving prep. I’d done my necessary advance preparation. I’d done some preliminary sorting of invoices. Our cat “helped.”

I also ordered shipping supplies so I could begin mailing as soon as my delivery arrived.

It went sideways on Monday morning at 9am, when the trucking company called to tell me that their lift gate truck was broken. They were hoping to borrow one for the afternoon. This sent me scrambling to reschedule my volunteers. The company wasn’t able to borrow a truck, so Monday was spent waiting for a truck that did not come. This meant Tuesday was delivery day and fetch Kiki from college day. I was told the truck would be there around 11:30. I pulled up to the warehouse a comfortable 45 minutes early, just as the truck also pulled up. So I had to ping my helpers saying “Truck is here!” Fortunately some of them were able to jump and come right away. The truck had 22 pallets, double stacked.

As the stacks came off the truck, we organized and put things where they went. Books in one place, slipcases sorted according to type. Fortunately the slipcases are very light. This meant that four people could easily lift and entire pallet.

Stacking was important because there wasn’t enough floor space for everything side by side. I’m very grateful to my helpers who willingly stacked slipcases three pallets high.

They also hefted a load of books over to my house where Howard could sign and sketch them. Once the truck was unloaded it headed out to go and fetch the remaining twelve pallets. We were told it would be back in about 90 minutes. I was glad. It meant we could be done unloading by about 2, which would give me comfortable driving hours to go fetch Kiki. (Three hours there, three hours back. She doesn’t have a car and the bus schedule is really inconvenient.) So my crew waited with me for 90 minutes, which is when we got a call letting us know the truck would be another hour. So we went out to lunch, came back and waited some more. The truck finally arrived at 3:30. We were done unloading in about 30 minutes. I finally had all of my shipment.

I went home to take care of some family things. Because family things do not always wait conveniently for business things. Link had had a rough day. I took him with me for the six hour trek to Cedar City and back. We stopped at the warehouse so that Kiki could see the things she will be helping me ship.

We have a lot of work ahead of us in the next few days. I still haven’t had a chance to form a new schedule. We need to get shipments to customers as quickly as we can. But first, Thanksgiving.

Comments are open on the original post at onecobble.com.

The Stories of Today

Today’s story could be about shipping. That was certainly my first focus for the day. Howard rallied the kids to help me prep the house. Some neighbor kids came and put calendars in packages. I ran errands, bought a ladder and other shipping supplies. The shipping schedule in the next two weeks is complex and wraps around the Thanksgiving holiday. Hopefully it does so in ways that will not impinge on the family celebrations.

I could also write a story about how I really wanted to get out of the house, so I packed up the kids at a moment’s notice and took them to see a movie. Being out was good for all of us.

Today also had the sadness of an important event for Patch which was missed, not because we were busy, but because we were distracted. I sat with him and shared in his sadness, because there wasn’t anything I could do to fix it. I couldn’t even suggest a substitute, because there really isn’t one.

Then there are the dozens of smaller stories. How the kids reacted when we told them the plan Howard and I have for some of our Christmas celebrations. The funny thing the cat did which made me laugh. The potted flowers I bought so that I’ll have flowers in the next couple of months.

One day. So many stories. And a brain too tired to tell any of them properly.

Comments are open on the original post at onecobble.com.

Call for Strong Volunteers

We need heavy lifting help on either Friday (Nov 21) or Monday (Nov 24) to do some box shifting in the Hypernode Media warehouse in Orem UT. We need 4-6 people who are strong enough to lift and stack boxes. 500 of the boxes will be light (slipcases) 200 of the boxes will be heavy (books). We do not have exact hours until the trucking company provides us with a delivery window.

We reward volunteers with food, free merchandise, and gift cards.

If you want to be on the list, email schlockmercenary@gmail.com and tell us what times you are available. Sandra will correspond with you to pin down exact times.

We’re expecting a delivery of 32 pallets. Our warehouse has floor space for 15 pallets. This means that as the trucking company offloads the pallets, Sandra needs a crew to be tearing into the pallets and stacking boxes into towers thus making space for more pallets. We’ll be stacking the slipcases up to twelve feet high (we’ll have a nice ladder and, yes, we have pallet wrap to keep the towers stable.) The books will stack about five or six feet high.

Again: if you have time and are interested, please email schlockmercenary@gmail.com with the hours that you are available.

Comments are open on the original post at onecobble.com.

Signs of Stress

I was sitting on the kitchen floor in front of the heating vent by the kitchen sink. My back was to the cupboards with additional cupboards on all three sides. I leaned my head back and closed my eyes, aware that this sitting-on-the-floor behavior is only something I do when I’m stressed. I don’t know why sitting in that particular spot is comforting when I’m upset, but it is. At least in the winter when the vent blows warm. I sat there, eyes closed, sorting my thoughts. One of the thoughts was to review in my mind the various signs of stress that are typical for the other members of my household. Howard gets irritable, particularly about food things. Kiki fixates on small problems and sleeps more than usual. Gleek gets angry and defensive, she also accumulates things. Patch fidgets and gets indecisive. So I review, the girls are both doing well right now. Howard is under work stress, but in normal quantities. The boys are both struggling. They are stressed.

In that list of signs of stress, I didn’t mention Link. That’s because I made a very saddening realization. If I made a list of “Things Link usually does daily” that list will match up one-to-one with the list of “signs that Link is stressed or depressed.” The stress has been so pervasive for so long that none of us recognized it as anything outside of normal. Mental illness is so sneaky. It doesn’t show up with a dramatic change the way that a cold or the flu does. There is no quick comparison yesterday to today. Instead you have a child who is changing and growing all the time. So you assume that everything is just part of their evolving personality. Except there is this creeping, niggling thought which grows stronger. Maybe this isn’t normal. Everyone says the teenage years are hard, but maybe they shouldn’t be quite this hard. I owe huge debts of gratitude to my parenting community. There were people who listened to me and said “no, that’s outside of normal.” I feel like I should have been strong enough to seek help without needing that decision validated.

The good news is that the school administrative staff have bent over backwards to be helpful. I don’t know if everyone has that experience with them. It probably helps that I was able to say that I’ve already scheduled doctor’s appointments. It was obvious that I’m taking all the “right” steps. And yet this still is not easy. There are also teachers in the mix. Some of them understand and work with me. Others, not so much. Which is why I end up sitting on the floor of my kitchen, rehearsing parts of difficult conversations I need to have in the next few days. And I think about how difficult it is to stand strong and say “Yes I know that thing should be simple, but for my child it is not.” And then to have to say it over and over again in different contexts, working to give my child the space he needs to heal and grow strong. My job seems clear when I type it out like that, yet I constantly second guess myself about whether I’m choosing correctly. And once I have the conversations, I’ll probably spend hours rehashing them in my head, thinking of different things I should have said. It is all so exhausting.

Comments are open on the original post at onecobble.com.

Drafting the Ending of a Book

I’m nearing the end of drafting a novel. Most of the time I haven’t had much trouble figuring out what needs to come next in the book. Lately though I felt like I’m floundering. I’m supposed to be grabbing the loose ends and tying them all together in a satisfactory conclusion. The trouble is that some of the loose ends I’ve got flopping around are not the right ones. Also I’m lacking a lot of threads that I need. This means that I’m writing myself a lot of notes about what I need to go back and put into earlier scenes and chapters. I’ve been tempted to go back and make all of these adjustments before forging onward to the ending. I’ve decided to plow through and write the ending anyway, even though I know it is the wrong one. So much about this book needs to shift around before it is ready for anyone to read it. I’ll have a clearer picture of what needs to shift once I have a completed draft. At least that’s what I’m telling myself in order to plow through to the end of the drafting.

For a while I was wondering if I was struggling with the novel because I have more personal familiarity with emotional struggle instead of emotional resolution. Life has not provided me with any “Happily Ever After” endings. Because I always have to get up the next morning and deal with the next day. Life is messy. Many problems come back again and again instead of being resolved permanently. Most of the things in my life which cause me stress are not new things. They’re just new iterations of old things. This means writing emotionally difficult scenes flows naturally. What is more difficult is trying to find an ending that feels true, gives hope, and doesn’t feel too neat. I don’t want to betray a complicated emotional story by tying all the loose ends into an unbelievably pretty bow. Yet I also want to express what I’ve found true in my own life, that repeated iterations of troubles can gradually provide permanent resolution. People can transform themselves and their lives, but it is not done easily or quickly.

I guess the best way to make sure that is in my book is to finish this draft and then rewrite it over and over again until I get it right.

Comments are open on the original post at onecobble.com.

Work Day

I keep paging ahead on my calendar. I’m looking ahead to the next few weeks. Sometimes I’m leaping ahead months to see the shape of things to come. I have to refresh the calendar information that I’m storing in my brain, because in order for all the pieces to fit, I have to know the shapes of the holes. It is an endlessly shifting puzzle.

Today I pulled out the invoices and began sorting them. Every time we do a complex shipping, I think that everything afterward will be easy. Then we think up new and exciting ways to make shipping even more complicated. This time we’ve got two sketched editions and two slipcases. I’m doing my best to take one step at a time. I’ve shifted things around at the warehouse to maximize floor space for the delivery. I haven’t yet begun to line up help, because I don’t have a defined schedule. It would be nicer if I did, but everything always shifts around. The calendars were supposed to arrive next Monday, but the printer mis-printed their hardcopy proof. I declined to accept it and they’re sending a new one. Not a big deal, except it delays the delivery. Instead of having calendars the week before we expect books, I suspect that both will hit at about the same time. Not what I’d hoped for, but I’ll deal with it.

I was glad to have a work day that was not impacted by urgent parenting tasks. It’s been a couple of weeks since that happened. I’m behind on most of my scheduled work.

Comments are open on the original post at onecobble.com.

An Incomplete Listing of My Projects in Process

Schlock Mercenary:

Prep for shipping (This includes sorting invoices, counting sketches, ordering boxes, etc.)

Warehouse reorganization (There is stuff that needs to be shifted around to make space for the incoming delivery of pallets.)

Schlock RPG preliminary layout

Challenge Coin PDF

Regular shipping

Schedule next XPC meeting

Household and parenting:

Diagnosis cycle for two kids. (This includes additional doctors’ appointments, emotional processing, etc.)

Helping two kids catch up on back work from absences

Not ignore the other two kids.

Rake leaves (make kids rake leaves.)

Basic home maintenance (Dishes, laundry, chores)

Shell two boxes of walnuts currently sitting on my back porch.

Writing / Creative:

Write about 6000 more words until I hit The End.

Begin the first cycle of revision.

Start drafting the next book.

Cover re-design for the Cobble Stones books.

Test Kindle’s new picture book platform, possibly put HH and SWH on there.

Do some picture book promotion for the coming holiday gift season.

Work on the 2014 family photo book.

Back Burner:

Finishing painting the front room and remodel that annoying coat closet.

Pay someone to re-roof the house.

Trim all the trees. (In March)

Finish writing the two picture books I have in mind.

More essay books.

Do something pretty with the dirt patch which is where our deck used to be.

Comments are open on the original post at onecobble.com.

Finding Happiness While Being Busy

Someone posted a link to an article about busyness as a disease. The content of the post was familiar. I’ve read it a dozen times before in various iterations. It lamented our over-scheduled lives, the fact that we don’t disengage from technology, that kids don’t have time to be bored. Many times I’ve read articles like this one and I’ve agreed. I spent years in an ongoing struggle to slow down my life. I thought that surely if life had a less hectic pace, I would have more happiness.

Then I had an epiphany, how happy I am has very little to do with the quantity of things on my to do list. I have been happy while working full-tilt with no time to stop. I have been miserable when I had long and leisurely days. Busy becomes miserable when I prioritize urgent over important. Busy is miserable if I’m busy at the wrong things or if I have to be busy according to someone else’s priorities instead of mine. That last part is the part that trips me up most often. I share my life with four children and a husband who all put things on my schedule. Then there are relatives, friends, church, school, etc. All of them would like to schedule me. Misery is not the goal, but sometimes it is the result if I do not keep in touch with my own priorities.

For years my kids did not have any after school lessons or activities. They came home and they played. Mostly they played video games. (There’s another set of articles telling me all about how that isn’t a good idea either.) This year two of my kids picked up one activity each. I watched how these outside activities added to their lives and brought them joy. They became more than they had been. Recently my son has become quite easily stressed. As I was casting about for solutions to his stress, I briefly considered dropping his outside activity (cello lessons) to give him more free time. I’ve rejected that, because I can see that free time doesn’t make him less stressed. In fact, sometimes he gets stressed because choosing to play this video game means he’ll have less time for that one. He’s not stressed because he’s busy. The stress is coming from somewhere else. (Hormones probably. Puberty is hard.) The key is that we don’t want to allow stress to steal something he enjoys. We don’t want to let stress make him smaller.

The life I have chosen is always going to be a busy one. I’ll always have multiple projects running in parallel. I’ll always have to use lists to track the things I need to get done. When I’ve got myself properly focused, I like being busy. Not everyone would be happy with a life like mine. Which is fine, everyone has to build their own life and fill it with their own priorities as much as they are able. (Most of us don’t get to be the sole masters of the lives we have.) For me, these past few weeks have been made of schedule disruption as I’ve responded to kid meltdowns and school absences. I have to find ways to reach for happiness no matter what else is going on in my days. That is hard on the days when I feel both stretched thin and emotionally bruised. Yet if I reach for happiness in the hard times, I’ll likely grab it when things lighten up. And I can do it while still being busy. I’m not going to let stress or anxiety make me live smaller.

Comments are open on the original post at onecobble.com.