Reinventing Jonathan: 2013

And why, you may ask, should I want to do that?

May. File late taxes. Send one spouse off to care for an ailing relative for the summer. (This isn’t a new occurrence, just an old one that has now become more or less routine.) Collect one graduating high school senior, one child home for a month from college, and one almost-teenager with no particular plans for the summer. Rinse and repeat.

June. Send out one set of columns. Send out a couple chapters of a new story. Attend one very cool-but-intimidating sf&f conference where about half the attenders are authors, editors, etc., who all seem a lot smarter than I will ever be. Send oldest child off to Wales for study abroad. Lather, rinse, and repeat.

Attend university orientation with child. Try (and fail) to help child get a job. Try to help children develop life skills. Moderate an online focus group or two, write up a couple of survey reports, do some other paid work odds and ends. Lather, rinse well, and repeat. Repeat, and repeat, and repeat.

Are you still surprised I’m interested in a reinvention?

#######

There are lots of things I could be doing: writing more columns, doing worldbuilding research, working on stories, volunteer editing, reading things on my should-read list. Cleaning up around the house. Cooking. Gardening. Engaging my children with various cultural/educational experiences. Family history. Organizing old files. Food storage. (And yes, there’s a rough hierarchy of descending likelihood at work here. How could you tell?)

And there’s a lot of them I should be doing. Many more than I am doing. The problem isn’t lack of things to do, but focus. Discipline. All That Stuff I’ve been whining about the lack of in my personal journals since I was in high school. Depressing, isn’t it, how our key weaknesses tend not to really change over time.

And I need to do something. Some things. More things. Different things. The right things. Something like that? Laziness only gets you so far — not technically true, since laziness actually gets you nowhere at all…

I’d like to be reading more. I’d like to be writing more consistently. I’d like to have a plan for helping my kids learn how to be competent adults, and a sense that my family is moving forward a more secure future. I’d like to have some alternative long-term avenues for earning money. Stay tuned here for more info.