Fri. July 5, 2024: It’s a Juggling Act
image courtesy of Gerd Altmann via pixabay.comFriday, July 5, 2024
New Moon
Pluto, Saturn, Neptune
Cloudy, hot, and humid
If you’re in the US, I hope you had a good holiday yesterday, and are enjoying a long holiday weekend. I felt like we should be walking the streets, keening, not celebrating.
If you’re anywhere else, I hope you had a good Thursday!
I scheduled yesterday’s Gratitude and Growth post to post yesterday. If you didn’t see it, you can read it here.
My brain was jumping all over the place Wednesday morning, worried about All That Must Be Done. So I made myself pick something and just get to it. Once I actually started working on something, I was much better. Much of Wednesday, today, and into the weekend is prepping material to go out the door next week (starting around Tuesday, to give people a chance to catch their breaths after the long holiday). It’s tied to my own schedule, and what I discussed with Daniel, integrating it with what I learned from Laura’s workshop and the financial workshop. There’s a need to balance All the Things that need to be done and look at each individual piece, while seeing how they fit into the bigger picture. There’s also a need not to get so distracted by planning that I’m not DOING.
If it takes longer to put it in the planning tool than to do it, the planning tool is dropped, and I just do the thing itself. I don’t get a dopamine hit by crossing something off a list. I get the hit by knowing it’s done.
It was too hard to work on a dark, gothic, stormy piece in bright sunshine, so I put that aside for a bit and did more practical work. I set up the Instagram profile for the Cerridwen Iris Shea Account and also the lnk.bio for that account. I’m initially planning out about a month’s worth of posts for it, and then the posting will be a little more organic. Not as organic/all over the place as the Devon account, but not quite as planned as the first month. It will, however, be more of a curated account than the Devon account. I hope you follow both: https://instagram.com/devonellingtonwork (@devonellingtonwork) and https://instagram.com/cerridwen.iris.shea (@cerridwen.iris.shea). I’m using the new Cerridwen’s Cottage logo as my profile picture on the latter.
In one of those “the universe offers synchronicity” moments, I mentioned to Daniel in our talk about using the NYU connections more (rather than just book club), and an opportunity landed in my inbox on Wednesday morning. I will wait until after the holiday weekend to take advantage of it.
I went to the grocery store to pick up a few things and the library.
I started the script coverage, then paused for lunch. I made a wonderful salad, using both our own lettuce (the Romaine survived the squirrels) and CSA goodies.
After lunch was the second of the four financial workshops. Enormously helpful in terms of practicality, emotional work, strategy, and hope. As artists, we are conditioned to believe that we can’t have a sustainable life because it suits the agendas of those who exploit us. That is not the reality, and it’s about understanding how the current systems work to make them work FOR US, while trying to change those systems so that future generations have a better time of it.
Reframing it like that makes such a huge difference.
After the class, I headed out to tarot. As always, we had a good discussion, and we are trying to handle what’s terrifying in the world through community. Again, reframing within a context that we aren’t helpless makes a huge difference. One of my friends from tarot helped me put in the new, uncracked mirror on the car. It was a bit of a fiddle, but she got it snapped in properly, and I am very grateful.
Home, cooked dinner, finished the script coverage.
Rested a bit.
Slept really well. Had a dream where I was on a residency retreat with one of the poets from BHPC and an artist from tarot group. We had quite the creative adventure!
Slept until 6, when Willa came in to wake me to give the cats breakfast, since both Charlotte and Tessa had been unable to get me out of bed.
Put in the take-down request for LEGERDEMAIN. Even though it was a holiday, it felt important to get it down on the dark moon, ending the cycle. The request was honored quickly. LEGERDEMAIN is officially off Vella. It can rest, and then start its next life.
I updated the links on all the websites and did a round of thank-you posts on social media.
The “last call” for ANGEL HUNT binge reading will go up this weekend.
Every day it’s clearer that this is the right decision. I’m glad that I did it for two years; now our visions are moving farther and farther apart, and I make different decisions.
I kept thinking it was Saturday yesterday, instead of Thursday!
I did a new sell sheet for The Topic Workbooks, which I can use at the market and beyond. I scheduled the “Last Chance to Binge” ANGEL HUNT post on TikTok. I wanted to post the Topic Workbooks video – only Flexclip destroyed it so I can’t download it again, and I haven’t been able to download it from my website (I lost the videos in the last computer crash, which happened two days before I planned the backup). The directions for the way it should work don’t actually work.
I’ve learned a bunch since the last video, so maybe I’ll just make all new ones. Not sure when, but it will happen. Gah. Even without videos, promotions for the Topic Workbooks go back into the calendar starting next week.
I finished the adaptation of A Stylish Death. I did about 13K to finish it. I hit a certain point, and it just made more sense to push through. The entire novella is 131 pages. With “Too Much Mistletoe” and “Tumble” it makes a good volume for MURDER BELLS.
Then, I started putting in the edits into the next draft of TAPESTRY. I was really proud of getting in five chapters’ worth of edits, and then realized I hadn’t put in the chapter names. So I will go back in and fix that today.
I re-read the material I have so far for THE VICIOUS CRITIC, which needs to be adapted, and then I need to move forward on it. It holds up pretty well, and is giving me the insight for BUT IS SHE A BETTING MAN? Which will be the next book in the series.
I’m reshuffling timelines for the books after that, because there’s a whole bunch of stuff I need to get in before the book set in and around 9/11.
All of that was done in the morning, and I gave myself the afternoon off to have, you know, an actual holiday and follow the election over in the UK. British voters definitely sent a message, didn’t they? Will we be organized enough and give a damn enough and furious enough at the manipulations going on to do the same?
My mom got her treat of hot dogs for dinner. I had mussels and pasta in a homemade wine sauce with herbs from the CSA and from a friend at tarot, and it was delicious.
The official fireworks down at the end of the street were pretty, but there were some bursts that were right in front of the porch windows, and a little too close for comfort. I missed most of them; Tessa was upset, so Willa and I stayed with her in my office to keep her calm. Charlotte, who is usually the biggest drama queen on the planet about everything, sat in the window and was fascinated.
There were more illegal fireworks in the previous years around the neighborhood, especially some dickheads a couple of blocks down setting off some after the really pretty, well done legitimate one. You know the type, they don’t know what they’re doing, they don’t care that they could set these old wooden houses on fire, they’re drunk and want to make noise.
It was nowhere near as bad out on Cape, where it felt like being under bombardment for days on end, and I constantly had to hose down the roof so the house wouldn’t catch fire. But it was still worse than in previous years, and annoying. And sent me into flashbacks of the worst times on Cape (there were years where I took Tessa into the walk-in closet and we had to wait it out for hours) or that last year, when I was in the empty house, the night before the last of the cleanup, hoping none of the fireworks would land on the roof, because I’d given away the hoses.
By one a.m. it was too oppressive to stay in my room, so I moved to the couch where it was cooler. Charlotte stretched across the back of the couch, to keep watch while I went back to sleep.
It’s very humid today; I hope we get a thunderstorm.
On today’s agenda: working on the short story. Putting in chapter titles for TAPESTRY (and remembering to add them as I move forward). Maybe starting to adapt VICIOUS CRITIC. Putting up some more Cerridwen posts (I’ll post three today, and then one most days for the month, then pull back and post 2-3X week). I have two script coverages to turn around; I’ll see how long they take. If I have enough time, I might add the one I planned to do tomorrow. I also have to do a run to the grocery store. I have to put in a Chewy order, too, so that’s all here before I leave for New York.
Tonight is First Friday, and there are a few things I’d like to attend, but it depends on how much work I get done/how much energy I have/the weather.
Tomorrow, I’m going to try the Vietnamese restaurant popup and turn around a script coverage (if I haven’t finished it today), and get some writing/editing in. Sunday I’m not doing any coverages (a big one came in for Monday, before the next workshop). I have two books to read for review this weekend, make sure the short story is ready to go out at the top of the week, and work on the materials for the Farmers’ Market artist residency (while also being in show head and doing whatever they need me to do for the show).
This coming week, I will be in serious “show head” for my reading. I also have the last two sessions of the financial workshop, yoga, and tarot. I will finish the prep for the residency, pack for New York over next weekend, and do as much client work as comes in. If it’s a light week, I’m okay with what will be done by Monday; but I’d prefer to have more work next week to close out this pay period, especially with a trip coming up, and not being able to take on any client work the week of the show/residency. I need to get out a bunch of proposals/LOIs this week, too, per my conversation with Daniel, so that I can set some new opportunities for fall and winter in the directions I want. I’d like to get the synopsis for CAST IRON MURDER finished and get those submissions out the door this week, too. Once I have the current short story out, I need to get one more out the door before the end of the month. AND I have to finish the Llewellyn article.
I’m going to put my head down and do as much as possible next week, so that the only thing I have to think about the following week is New York and then the residency. I can take on a good bit of work the week after, if it comes in, and then there’s the Word X Word event at the end of the month.
It’s all do-able, as long as I don’t start to feel overwhelmed and dither.
In the meantime, I hope you all have a good weekend, and we’ll catch up about it next week.
