Sandra Tayler's Blog, page 34

Travel

So I was sick and there was book shipping. Then I was still sick because of ear infections on top of flu. When my head cleared I was a little focused on my upcoming travel and on the anxiety related to that travel. Then I drove for 11 hours in one day. Now I’ve landed at the houses of my relatives and all the rooms are filled with people to talk to. So blogging has been sparse and it is likely to continue to be sparse until I have quiet spaces to process my thoughts and write them down. In theory I’m packing my head full of things to sort.

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Sick Day

This is the sort of week where I find out on Friday that a beloved friend suffered through a major medical event on Monday. She left me a voice mail message about it on my home phone, which I never checked all week. I’d still not know except a mutual friend called to say “Did you know…” Fortunately the crisis is weathered, and recovery can happen at home instead of in the hospital. Truthfully there really wasn’t any more I could do if I’d known. I certainly would not have taken my sickness to go visit in the hospital. My friend is well cared for by those more closely related than I. She knew my lack of response was not for lack of caring. We had a good phone conversation today.

It just underlines how I’ve only handled the bare minimum of what needed to be done this week. Voice mail unchecked, email not answered, several social things cancelled. Sometimes my brain wants to start fretting about all of it. Because at my current energy levels catching up will be impossible. Instead I just need to rest and trust that in a day or two I will have more capability than I have today.

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LOTA shipping day 1

We sent out two thirds of the preordered LOTA books today. All of the unsketched and sketched with LOTA, Artist Choice, Ebby, TAG, Pi, and Para are in the mail. Thursday will be the final shipping day. All the rest of the orders will go out then.

This means my brain is fried. On top of the usual shipping brain fry, I’m also sick. So I don’t have a whole lot of complex thoughts right now. I do have a small smugness, to which Howard tells me I am entitled. Yesterday when I was printing postage there was a moment where I stared at the box and wondered if I’d printed enough. I looked at the stack, thought about the hours allotted, thought about who was coming to help, and realized it felt about right. My instinct was almost perfectly accurate. I used to have to stress and do math to figure out how much work to stage for a shipping day. I’ve now internalized the processes enough that I can eyeball it. Strange that my life had let me to a place where I have this expertise, but useful all things considered.

So I’m taking my small smugness to bed where we will sleep until tomorrow when I’ll begin lining up work for Thursday.

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Thinking Week

“Are you okay? You seem a little off this morning.” Howard said to me from across the kitchen counter. At first I tried to answer that I was just tired. It is true that I’m tired, but more is going on than that. I’ve been off for most of the week. Some of it is due to the fact that I had a necessary conversation with a friend. It is the sort of conversation which is important to have so that everyone stays friends. I’m glad my friend saw the need. I’m still soul searching and thinking as a result. Unfortunately soul searching tends to scare the demons of self-doubt out of the corners where they’ve been hiding. But I already wrote a post about that, and the noise has mostly settled anyway, so it wasn’t really what Howard was seeing this morning. (Also I probably need to write an entirely different post about how a loving personal critique from a friend can save hundreds of future conversations not with just that friend, but with others as well. I’m pretty sure that is going to be the outcome here and it’s worth wading through a cloud of demons.)

We’re in the final week of school, which means we have a routine that is only sort-of normal. Instead of having a pattern so familiar I can almost ignore it, I have to look at each day and remember its special parameters. This day is the dance festival, that day is the drama showcase, Link comes home early all week, Gleek and Patch have partial days on Friday. None of it is a surprise. The patterns are familiar from prior years, but I have to think about them.

The shipment of Longshoreman of the Apocalypse arrived yesterday. That means life has switched over into high-gear shipping mode. After nine Schlock books, two picture books, two XDM books, and thirty thousand coins, shipping is familiar. Yet for the past several years I’ve had my friend Janci as an auxiliary brain during shipping season. This year Janci was booked solid and Kiki needs college money, so Kiki has taken on the role of auxiliary brain. Kiki is doing a fine job, but the role is new to her. As with the final week of school, the patterns are familiar, but I’m having to think through all of them.

Add physical fatigue because boxes of books are heavy and some sleep deprivation because I haven’t been getting to bed on time. Yup Howard, I was a little off. There was a lot of thinking to be done this week. The good news is that most of the thinking is complete. All that remains is to do the things.

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

Final Days of the School Year

I’ve been watching the approaching end of the school year with anticipation. Yesterday I wished that we could just switch over into summer mode. It always feels unfair to have Memorial Day weekend to make clear what summer will be like and then to require one more week of school. I admit I was not thrilled when I had to roll out of bed at 6:45 this morning. But then we gathered in the family room for the brief prayer and scripture study we do on school mornings. The kids were curled up in blankets, half asleep, as usual. I looked around and counted to four, not three as I have for most of the year.

I felt it again as I drove Link to school. I’m going to miss the patterns and structures of this school year. Having a reason to pull everyone out of bed at the same time gives focus to my days. I’m going to miss that. Sure, we’ll be back to that schedule in the fall, but I’ll also be back to counting to three instead of four, since Kiki will be back at college. This past month with her woven into the patterns of daily life has been lovely.

So I’m going to try to savor this week as much as I can. I have four days then we’re launched into summer where the structure is all of my own making. I both love that and struggle with it.

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Demons of Self Doubt

There are some days when the demons of self-doubt set up a howling screaming chorus in my head. If I turn my back on them and try to work, they do everything they can to convince me my efforts are futile. Everything I do or see becomes evidence of my failure as a human being. Dishes not done? Obviously I’m a slob who doesn’t know how to clean up or to teach her kids to clean up. Kids fighting or crying? My fault. I’m a bad parent. Breakfast? Don’t eat that, I’m fat enough already. I should eat mindfully, but I shouldn’t try to cook something healthy because I suck at cooking. Might as well embrace the fat and eat whatever is easiest. Try to write about self-doubt? All my words are stupid and no one will want to read them anyway. The demons use all the mean words and they never pull their punches.

When the demons get to howling it feels like I have no power to make them stop. That is a lie they’d like me to believe. The power I have, and that I must use even though it is hard, is to make sure that I don’t stop. I inch my way forward toward some goal, any of my goals. As I do, I hang tight to the hope that the demons will wear out and go back to whatever cave it is where they usually dwell. If I’m feeling up to it, sometimes I name the demons. Each one harps on a single message, a single fear. Sometimes by separating one from the pack I can see how ridiculous it is and it withers away. Other times I catch a demon and confront it with counter examples, things in my life which are evidence that the demon lies. Unfortunately it is hard to catch an individual when they’re all swarming at once.

Sometimes prayer vanquishes the howling mob. Other times prayer just gives me enough strength to keep inching forward. Both are answers to my need, though I naturally prefer the outcome that has “vanquishes” in it.

The one time when I can’t hear the demons is when I’m listening to someone else. Howard talks me through many things. Or I walk outside and visit with a neighbor. She can’t see the plague of negativity in my head, and for the span of time when we talk, I don’t hear it either. So I inch my way forward, pray, and seek out loving voices. Over time the demons will get tired. I can outlast them. I have before and I’ll do it again.

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Building a Grape Arbor

Yesterday I wrote about my grand garden plans. One of them involved grapes and an arbor.

I left the space for one when I put posts into the ground. The idea was to have a grape hedge with an arbor. Today I bought lumber and pulled out my power tools.

The timing on this really was perfect. I had an overcast day and if I’d waited any longer the grapes would have been unweildy to work with.

It is not a particularly elegant arbor, but within only a few weeks you’re not going to be able to see much of it anyway. Next spring, when the wood has had time to weather, I’ll stain it to better match the posts to which it is attached.

It is nice to finally see one of the grand garden plans realized.

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BYU Special Collections Tour

If you are ever offered the opportunity to tour a university library’s special collections department, say yes. Howard and I got just such a tour today deep in the basement of the Harold B. Lee Library on BYU campus. On our way in, they gave us bright red visitors badges and our very own security guard. Though really his job was to protect all the things from us, so I guess he wasn’t really our guard. We also had three librarian archivists leading us on the tour to show us the coolest things. It was part sales pitch “See, we’ll take good care of the things that you give us.” But mostly they were excited to showcase their collection and genuinely thrilled at the history that they’ve collected, restored, and preserved. Justifiably so. I came away filled with awe, not just for the things they showed me, but for the dedication and love that goes into making sure that generations to come will be able to see the same things.

The first thing we noticed were the shelves themselves.



They looked like a wall when we first entered the vault room. But they move to create aisles so that librarians can find the materials they are seeking.



It was impressive to see these massive rows slide around noiselessly. We were cautioned to be wary about being between them if they began to move. They have sensors that are supposed to prevent motion if something is there, but the casual way that they mentioned sensors failing made me sure it is a thing that has happened more than once. Fortunately only some metal stools have thus far been sacrificed to the gods of mechanical shelving.

Our first stop was where they keep the first printings of The Book of Mormon. I was startled when the librarian pulled one out of its box and let us hold it.



I’ve seen one before, but not to touch. I was awed to be in contact with a piece of my religious history. I was also impressed with the array of first editions in different languages that they had.



The early Mormon people were not wealthy. It speaks of how much they reverenced this book that the constructions and bindings are all so beautiful.

I spent a lot of time in general looking at the bindings and details of books. I noticed how many of the older volumes had ridges on their spines.



I asked if those ridges were decorative or structural. It turns out to be a result of the binding methods that were used.

They showed us one of the oldest “books” in existence. A cuneiform tablet.



There we all were, six of us staring in awe at this evidence of the first writing of humanity. It was thousands of years old. It is also a receipt for beer.

We didn’t have a chance to see the most elaborate illuminated manuscripts, but this lesser one was still amazing.



The gold shined across the pages and we could see that all the letters were hand drawn. I could have stared at that for a very long time. But there was a different wonder to see. For a time it was popular to create hidden paintings on the edge of book pages. My photo does not do this justice. Fortunately the internet can show you more clearly.



Seeing this one kind of makes me want to take some of my One Cobble books, the really thick ones, and paint something on the edges.

I’d mentioned Jane Austen, so they took me to where the Austen books were. A librarian took this first edition copy of Emma and put it into my hands.



I’d seen this pattern on endpapers of books before, but figured that it was some sort of 70′s thing. Instead it appears to be authentic to the era when Austen was publishing.



I would have loved more time to look at each of these things, to sit with them and really comprehend each one individually. The immensity of what they have down there is staggering. There are fifteen miles of shelving and they’ve just been given five more miles. More than once I was glad of our guides, because I would have had to wander to find a way out.

Books are not the only things they have. This is the Oscar for the movie Camelot.



These days Oscars are not allowed to be sold or donated. They are supposed to go back to the academy. This one was acquired by special collections before those rules were created. I love that you could see the place around Oscar’s legs where he’d been picked up and carried, or perhaps held aloft in triumph.

We got to peek at the cold vault, though we didn’t go inside.



Instead week peeked at it through a window while standing in the yellow lit ante chamber. Film has to be kept cold. It also has to sit in the ante room and come slowly up to temperature before it can be manipulated. The yellow light did strange things to vision. We didn’t stay there long.

The library is making massive efforts to digitize as much of the collection as they can and to make it available online. This set up is for exactly that purpose.



It allows for simultaneous photography of both pages while protecting the book and the spine. All a human has to do is raise the glass, turn a page, lower the glass and photograph again.



They’ve lots of books yet to do.

I walked out of the building with a renewed respect for librarians. They were as excited to show us the amazing things as we were to see them. I could hear in their voices how much they value history, which was why it felt so strange that they’d like to have some of our papers. This is why we got the tour, they want to create a Howard and Sandra Tayler collection into their massive archive. They reach out to alumni who are creators with this sort of request and they found us. This leaves me feeling honored and…with an odd feeling I don’t quite have a name for.

To be remembered is the dream, isn’t it? I’ve read essays from scholars who create treatises on the correspondence of Jane Austen. In daydream moments, I’ve looked at letters and journals of my own and wondered if someday there would be a researcher glad to have them, or at least my great grandchildren might be interested in family stories. Now a library actually wants these things. They are things which have been taking up space in my house because of that daydream. Yet I’ve seen the preservation infrastructure that they have. I know how much all that effort must cost and I can’t imagine anything that I produce being worth the expense to preserve it for generations. Then I think of all six of us hovering in amazement around a little stone beer receipt. None of us have any way of knowing what future generations will want to reference.

So, yes there will be a Howard and Sandra Tayler collection in the Special Collections of the BYU Library. We don’t know yet what will be in it, nor how much will be public during our lifetimes. But if nothing else I can stop having to decide to throw out things which might be interesting for future generations, but which I haven’t the space to store.

Special collections is well worth your time to visit and if you are so lucky as to be offered a tour. Say yes.

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Filling the Waiting Space With Other Work

I have been informed that the shipment of books will not be arriving this week after all. So now we’re back to the original schedule instead of the week early schedule. This leaves me with a space of time where I’m accumulating and processing orders, but not yet beginning to sort invoices for shipping. The busy is coming, but it is not here yet. Not only is it not here, but also I’ll be handing off portions of the work to Kiki. Even at the busiest, it won’t be as crazy as it has sometimes been.

I’m going to use the time to push through the challenge coin PDF. I my second preliminary layout for it today. The first preliminary layout showed me how I did not want to organize the stories. I knew it was wrong, but hadn’t a clue what would be right. So I talked with Howard and he said it should read as if you were sitting at a bar where folk were swapping coin stories. The moment I heard that, I knew it was the right approach. It helped me figure out what stories go where, because one story can be a set up for the next one. It gives a narrative flow to the whole project. Today I started defining the design space. I threw in a top and bottom border element which is vaguely like what we’ll actually use. I put page numbering in place. I defined the styles for basic text, pull quote text, and sidebar text. All of these things need to be refined, but when I took it to Howard he agreed that the shape is right.

One of the hard things about starting to design a new book project is that every decision extinguishes another possibility. I love the bar conversation format. I believe it is the right one for this project. But it means the death of my original concept which was to sort stories by service. Each choice narrows the project into what it will actually be. In the refining stages it is easy to see how each change makes the project better. In the early stages there are so many possibilities and they are all so ephemeral that it is hard to see which will work best. I end up spinning in paralysis of choice. Today’s work means I’m past that stage. (I hope.)

The other work I’m going to try to push forward in the next few days is writing. I’ve just hit the mid-point in my novel. I wanted to have the draft done by the end of June. I’m not sure I can make that, but it is worth reaching for. If nothing else, I want this to be a week where I average 1000 words per day across both fiction and non-fiction writing. That’s a good writing week for me. I’ve even set up a spread sheet to help me track. Now I can look back and see when I was writing and when I was focused on other things instead.

I have plenty of things to keep me usefully busy while I’m waiting for books. Yet somehow part of my brain would really just like to sit and wait. Not that waiting is fun, I don’t like it much at all, it is just that even when I’m trying to get the other things done, part of my brain is focused on waiting instead. This makes the waiting feel much longer. Not my favorite.

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Watching and Counting

The day we open pre-orders on a new book is always a day of distraction for Howard and I. (Related news: You can now pre-order Schlock Mercenary: Longshoreman of the Apocalypse. It is one of my favorite Schlock books.) In theory we should just be able to open ordering and just go about the regular work of the day. Instead we end up watching the numbers and then doing math in our heads, because different things are possible in the months to come depending on how well the book launch does. It used to be that everything rode on book launches. We’re trying to even out the business so that there is more to sustain us in between. This reduces the stress of pre-order days, but habits formed under pressure are tricky to change. So we’ve been checking numbers a lot today.

I’m also watching the progress of the Altered Perceptions fundraiser. I don’t have much personally at stake in that one, except that I’d dearly love to see my friend Rob out from under the medical debt that has been weighing him down. I’d love even more to see the proposed foundation have enough funds to get off of the ground. I’ve donated a revised version (made more appropriate for print) of my Married to Depression post. I’ve also been making social media noise as appropriate. Possibly more than most people would prefer to have to listen to.

I’ll be watching numbers on both the pre-order and the indiegogo campaign through the end of this week. However I’m hopeful that tomorrow I can spend more time working instead of hovering. Granted, some of the hovering is necessary. I am the customer service department for the Tayler Corporation and quite a few people have needed help with their orders today. The troubles have all been easy to solve, which is good.

Despite the distraction, I’ve still done some good things today. I helped Howard eat some yummy jambalaya that he made. I visited a friend who truly needed a visit. I wrote words on my novel. The kids all got to school and then they all came home. In a few minutes I’ll remind them all that homework is a thing which exists. Though I don’t expect they have much. The teachers can count to eight-school-days-left as easily as my kids can. Also that last day is only about two hours long, so it hardly counts. Field day doesn’t count as a real school day either. We’ve reached the point where books are being turned in and desks are starting to be cleared out. Soon I’ll be figuring out how to work with the kids home all day long. But for tomorrow, I send them to school and have a normal work day. Today was a day of counting. Tomorrow I go back to work.

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