Time and Time Again

It seems like I keep coming back to the subject of time management, but it is proving to be one of the thorniest issues I face as I settle into my final (really, I mean it this time) retirement.

One of the things I am finding is that I need to maintain a calendar of appointments and events in order to not get over committed. For instance, this is what happened last week:

My sister and I had wanted to get together to bake cookies, but we couldn’t find a time that worked for both or us (and when the weather wasn’t seriously threatening, since there is a mountain pass between us). So we decided to wait until after Christmas, since our family gathering was on January 7th. We settled on Monday the 2nd, and I knew it would be an all-day thing. No big deal, I have time.

Then a friend here in town needed transportation to the hospital 70 miles away over the mountain, so there went Thursday. My husband went with me, and we made it a date day for the two of us after we dropped her off. We saw a movie matinee, got some yogurt, and stopped for an early dinner on the way back home. I told her I couldn’t bring her home on Saturday (her scheduled release date) because I had my family gathering, and thought that was the end of it.

But Saturday morning as I was leaving for the all-day family thing and the third trip over the mountain she texted that they were not going to release her until the next day, and could I pick her up?

So there you have it. Four days gone out of seven.

Now part of that is circumstances, which happens a lot more during the holidays, but part of it is also that I didn’t take a look at the calendar and the convergence of events.

I look back on that week, and the hours spent in the car, and I don’t really see where I would have cut back. 

I won't say there wasn't a way I could cut back, because there certainly was, though I chose not to.

It was something that happened – that I ALLOWED to happen – and I will live with the consequences. Like the fact that I was up several hours early each day and was exhausted by the end of the week, and that I have extra charges on my credit card for gas. I enjoy baking with my sister, and it was wonderful to see all my family after the last two-plus years of small gatherings. The friend who needed surgery didn't have a lot of options and although I did her a favor I also did it for myself because I want to believe that I am a good person.

Even so, I have a lesson to learn from this week, because it was so easy for those things to pile up on each other. I was just going along and suddenly an entire week was gone, I was bone-tired but also wound up from all the hours of driving in marginal weather, and I hadn’t had enough time for the other parts of my life. I need to learn to keep my life in balance, and that’s going to be a tough one.

But, hey! At least there were cookies!

New Book!

So this came in today!

The ebook has been out for a while, but we finally got it in print. Excited to see it for real. Copies will be going to Kickstarter backers in the next few days, and the hard copy will be available for sale through the usual online channels, as well as from your local book store via distribution from Ingram. Volume 2 should be here in another day or so, and you better believe I will be sharing a picture!

Yeah, I got my grubby little fingerprints on the nice glossy cover! It’s my proof copy, so I’ll get a beauty shot when I get the Real Thing (without the “Not For Resale” band.)

Looking Back, Looking Forward

As an adult I have never been much of one for New Year Resolutions, or deep navel-gazing. I’m far too much of a pragmatist to put much faith in resolutions made in the soft light of the post-Christmas glow - that I know won’t last past the first week of February, if that - and mostly I find the year-end ruminations of other people far too self-congratulatory or maudlin - or boastful - to be of much use.

Which is a strange dichotomy for someone who is as mushy and sentimental as I am. I cry at Kodak commercials (remember those?) and love books and movies with a happy ending that leaves me sniffling.

But New Year’s?

I usually let the end of the year go by with a simple “Happy New Year,” and leave it at that.

Is this a steampunk crystal ball that can tell us what the next year holds? Now, I don't think so! Besides, where's the suspense in that?

The last few years, and especially the last couple, I’ve mostly ignored the celebrations except to stand with my husband for the last few seconds of the old year and welcome the new one in together - based on the adage, “Begin as you would go.”

But this year has been different. Change and challenge have been the primary themes of this year, probably the most challenging in a while.

Through Covid and the shutdowns there were challenges but it felt as though all of us shared that load and we were all shouldering similar burdens.The last thirteen months - starting with Steve’s emergency hospital visit last Thanksgiving - it felt as though the rest of the world was coming back to life but we were still reeling.

Yeah, it kind of felt like this at times.

Then this week this post came through my feed, Your Year In Review. Max Daniels nailed many of the things that bother me about year-end lists, and I found myself stopping to actually think about how much has happened in the last year.

I won’t go into everything on her list right now, but I will use it as a way to remind myself that we actually accomplished a lot this year, and we are going into the next year in a much better place than we were in January.

I am not good at giving myself credit for what I accomplished, so I am going to make a list of the things I did this year. I sometimes tend to focus on the negative, so I will try to take positive goals into the new year.

And for tonight - the last hours of 2022 - I will spend it in an online “Zoom room” with other creatives, beginning as we would go by spending a few hours in each other’s (mostly-silent) company and creating.

I wish each of you all the best for the coming year, and I look forward to sharing the next 12 months with you all. 

I will leave you with this Tweet from best-selling author Harlan Coben. I shared it a year ago, and I hope we can all resolve to take his suggestion to heart for another year. I think it's excellent advice - and if you're anything like me, you won't be able to stop at 5 minutes!


Digging Out of a Hole

The posts on this page are re-posts from my Patreon page, also titled Dispatches From the Tsunami Zone. Posts appear here for free a couple weeks after they are posted for the patrons subscribed at the $1/month level and above. This post initially appeared on that site before my December break.

I have wrestled with this for more than a week, intending it to be the last post before my December break. It has proved far more difficult than I expected, and I still don't think I got it quite right. I hope it helps me to writer it, and you to read it.

Lately I have been struggling, and I have finally come to the conclusion that I have been having a brush with depression. I don’t think it’s anything clinical, but I do think it has a lot to do with the major changes taking place, and my adjustment to them.

In spite of everything I thought I knew, it seems that there was a lot about retirement that I hadn’t internalized quite as well as I thought I had. The lifestyle changes, the freedom to create, the release of the constraints put on me by the outside (working) world - it’s all there. It’s mostly positive, and on an intellectual level I know that. But somewhere deep down there’s an emotional level that hasn’t seen it as positively.

That’s where I’ve been for several weeks, and may well be for several more. Making those timid first steps into an unknown world.

Three years ago, when I was just weeks from retirement, I thought I had it all figured out. I would have time for all the things I didn’t get to do when I was working. I could write for hours without worrying about having to go to work in the morning. I could read a book at lunch and not have to stop and go back to work. I could watch a movie and knit without worrying about how late it was.

And then, as I have talked about repeatedly, Things Changed. My retirement got interrupted almost before it began. Our planned cross-country road trip was postponed for over a year, and I spent many, many hours at an office I was supposed to have left for good.

The delays, the stop-and-start of my retirement, left me with an unsettled feeling, and the inability to completely adjust to our “new normal,” mostly because there was nothing new about it. I was still going to the office every day, with some major gaps where I didn’t go in at all.

Yeah, that’s easy to adjust to; just ask anyone who’s had to work rotating shifts.

It sucks.

Finally, at the beginning of the summer, I was able to leave the day job for good. I was on-call, still an active employee, but I wasn’t on site for the last several months. Over those months the phone calls became fewer and farther between, going from once or twice a week to once or twice a month. It’s been long enough that I really think I am finished.

Which is the problem.

For the third time I am trying to make the transition from all those familiar status symbols - the title, the office, the name on the list of managers, the questions only I could answer - to being just me, alone with my stories.

That was what I wanted, right? So why am I having so much trouble just DOING what I said I wanted so badly? What is my problem?

Welcome to the Unknown.

I think that pretty well sums it up. I have no idea what really lies ahead. Having my plans so completely destroyed - the return to work, the entire world upended by Covid, economic disruption, exhaustion - left me with the inability to trust in anything.

I made plans, set up schedules, created my own goals, and then completely failed to follow through. Sure, some of it was outside disruptions, but part of it was inside me and it cast a shadow over everything.

I have had flashes of productivity. I finished a book, ran a successful Kickstarter, joined a short fiction co-op. But none of it kept me moving forward. I could complete a project - sometimes - and then stall for weeks.

Then tonight I watched a YouTube video from a maker we have followed for a few years. He was doing work he truly loved, but as the enterprise grew he spent more time being a manager and less time being a creator. Eventually the job he loved turned into just a job, one loaded with stresses and responsibilities and his incipient depression triggered. Work was his coping mechanism, and he pushed himself into 80 and 90 hour workweeks. Tonight’s video was from his second-in-command; the original creator is taking an indefinite leave to address his mental health.

I am nowhere near that level. Right now I am just looking for ways to break the logjam and keep moving, however slowly.

Some things have helped. Completing other projects, like picking up an almost-finished piece of knitting and doing the last bits. Doing short projects, like baking banana bread. Having a friend to dinner for the first time in over two years. Having a very short list of daily tasks that I can get done in the first hour of the day.

I will keep looking and trying things. I’m planning at least one, maybe two, cookie-baking days over the next week. I am working on an audio short story to share here. I’ve got a couple novels in process, and I’m doing small knitting projects. Yes, those are all over the map, but I am trying to encourage my creative nature to come out and play again, and to trust that this time we can keep playing.

I think this is a problem we all have faced during the extraordinary turmoil of the last nearly three years. What are you doing to try and right your creative ship? Or have you maintained your course through the troubled waters? Tell me what you think!

Digging Out of a Hole

The posts on this page are re-posts from my Patreon page, also titled Dispatches From the Tsunami Zone. Posts appear here for free a couple weeks after they are posted for the patrons subscribed at the $1/month level and above. This post initially appeared on that site before my December break.

I have wrestled with this for more than a week, intending it to be the last post before my December break. It has proved far more difficult than I expected, and I still don't think I got it quite right. I hope it helps me to writer it, and you to read it.

Lately I have been struggling, and I have finally come to the conclusion that I have been having a brush with depression. I don’t think it’s anything clinical, but I do think it has a lot to do with the major changes taking place, and my adjustment to them.

In spite of everything I thought I knew, it seems that there was a lot about retirement that I hadn’t internalized quite as well as I thought I had. The lifestyle changes, the freedom to create, the release of the constraints put on me by the outside (working) world - it’s all there. It’s mostly positive, and on an intellectual level I know that. But somewhere deep down there’s an emotional level that hasn’t seen it as positively.

That’s where I’ve been for several weeks, and may well be for several more. Making those timid first steps into an unknown world.

Three years ago, when I was just weeks from retirement, I thought I had it all figured out. I would have time for all the things I didn’t get to do when I was working. I could write for hours without worrying about having to go to work in the morning. I could read a book at lunch and not have to stop and go back to work. I could watch a movie and knit without worrying about how late it was.

And then, as I have talked about repeatedly, Things Changed. My retirement got interrupted almost before it began. Our planned cross-country road trip was postponed for over a year, and I spent many, many hours at an office I was supposed to have left for good.

The delays, the stop-and-start of my retirement, left me with an unsettled feeling, and the inability to completely adjust to our “new normal,” mostly because there was nothing new about it. I was still going to the office every day, with some major gaps where I didn’t go in at all.

Yeah, that’s easy to adjust to; just ask anyone who’s had to work rotating shifts.

It sucks.

Finally, at the beginning of the summer, I was able to leave the day job for good. I was on-call, still an active employee, but I wasn’t on site for the last several months. Over those months the phone calls became fewer and farther between, going from once or twice a week to once or twice a month. It’s been long enough that I really think I am finished.

Which is the problem.

For the third time I am trying to make the transition from all those familiar status symbols - the title, the office, the name on the list of managers, the questions only I could answer - to being just me, alone with my stories.

That was what I wanted, right? So why am I having so much trouble just DOING what I said I wanted so badly? What is my problem?

Welcome to the Unknown.

I think that pretty well sums it up. I have no idea what really lies ahead. Having my plans so completely destroyed - the return to work, the entire world upended by Covid, economic disruption, exhaustion - left me with the inability to trust in anything.

I made plans, set up schedules, created my own goals, and then completely failed to follow through. Sure, some of it was outside disruptions, but part of it was inside me and it cast a shadow over everything.

I have had flashes of productivity. I finished a book, ran a successful Kickstarter, joined a short fiction co-op. But none of it kept me moving forward. I could complete a project - sometimes - and then stall for weeks.

Then tonight I watched a YouTube video from a maker we have followed for a few years. He was doing work he truly loved, but as the enterprise grew he spent more time being a manager and less time being a creator. Eventually the job he loved turned into just a job, one loaded with stresses and responsibilities and his incipient depression triggered. Work was his coping mechanism, and he pushed himself into 80 and 90 hour workweeks. Tonight’s video was from his second-in-command; the original creator is taking an indefinite leave to address his mental health.

I am nowhere near that level. Right now I am just looking for ways to break the logjam and keep moving, however slowly.

Some things have helped. Completing other projects, like picking up an almost-finished piece of knitting and doing the last bits. Doing short projects, like baking banana bread. Having a friend to dinner for the first time in over two years. Having a very short list of daily tasks that I can get done in the first hour of the day.

I will keep looking and trying things. I’m planning at least one, maybe two, cookie-baking days over the next week. I am working on an audio short story to share here. I’ve got a couple novels in process, and I’m doing small knitting projects. Yes, those are all over the map, but I am trying to encourage my creative nature to come out and play again, and to trust that this time we can keep playing.

I think this is a problem we all have faced during the extraordinary turmoil of the last nearly three years. What are you doing to try and right your creative ship? Or have you maintained your course through the troubled waters? Tell me what you think!

Leaving the Scarcity Zone

I have talked before about having all the time in the world, but the emphasis in that post was about not giving away our time just because we no longer have a day job. I pointed out that we still have a finite number of hours in the day, and if we start giving away that time we can quickly lose all those hours.

At the same time, we have to change how we look at our time management. If we want to feed our creative selves we need to give ourselves permission to take those hours for our own pursuits, to put our own time needs above the demands of others.

In a recent Q&A on YouTube Adam Savage described some of these issues as being the "scarcity model" of time management, which crystalised the subject for me.

Thinking of time as inherently limited - which we had to do when we had day jobs and small children and non-negotiable outside demands - forces us to view that time as doubly precious, and intensifies the pressure to make the best possible use of the hours we do have.

In order to leave that scarcity zone we need to examine our attitudes about not only our time, but also about what constitutes the best possible use.

My dad was a child of the Great Depression, as was my mother. Neither one believed in "wasting time." I reached young-adulthood with a deeply ingrained mindset that I had to be productive, to be doing something useful at all times. (Fortunately for me, they both saw reading as a Good Thing.)

Even creative hobbies needed to have value. Reading was learning, even when it was popular fiction, because you were practicing a necessary skill. Sewing produced clothing, cooking fed your family. I don't think my dad ever understood my writing, though he eventually caught on to the fact that I was getting paid for it, so that made it acceptable.

Dad was, I believe, a morning person by nature. As he aged, he rose earlier and earlier, often having his coffee and newspaper (after showering and getting dressed) as early as 5 am - a time I would characterize as a late bedtime. I still feel guilty when I stay up 'til the wee hours and sleep until noon, even though that's what my body says works for me. I should be up early, making those hours productive.

The scarcity model, for me, is tied up in this attitude. The hours I spend on my creative life need to be productive, focused on output, on results, and because there are so few hours I need to be intensely focused on the product, not the process.

Another part of the scarcity model is the way we have all had to shoehorn our creative time into an already-packed schedule.

We got up an hour early, or stayed up an hour later, sacrificing sleep to get a quiet hour to create.

We learned to multi-task. This week I heard one of the most hardcore multi-task stories ever. A young single mother on a limited budget wanted to write, but had an active toddler and few resources. She joined an inexpensive gym with childcare included, taught herself to write on her phone, put her daughter in childcare while she exercised, and wrote several books on the treadmill and stationary bike. She did this because she was in scarcity mode; it was the only way she had time.

I am still trying to figure out my balance point. I want to be able to noodle in a story, decide I don't like the way it's going, and abandon it for something else. I may come back to it later, but I don't have to. I can create for the sheer enjoyment of putting words on paper. I want to start knitting and rip it all out an hour later because I'm not happy with what I am creating.

I want the freedom to enjoy the process without worrying about the product, and not feel that the time was "wasted" because I didn't produce something.

Scarcity says I can't do that because I have to make the most of my few hours of creative time. But I am trying to kick the scarcity model to the curb.

Would I like to be creating a lot of books and stories, and have them generate lots of money? Of course! But I no longer want to be controlled and distracted by the scarcity model.

How about you?

Who Do You Trust?

I am back, after an absolutely CRAZY holiday season. I thought this one would be fairly quiet, with no family visiting and no big travel plans. But somehow the last few weeks have been nuts. I think it has abated somewhat, but I’m kind of afraid to say so for fear or jinxing it!

This week my husband shared with me a thread he had read on Twitter. and I think it has implications far beyond what the original poster addressed.

Here's the link to the original thread Losing Trust .

A quick TL;DR for those who don't want to stop and read the thread: What causes a sudden, precipitous drop in business/readership/viewership? Often the people in charge of the business will see it as a reaction to an incident, a change in product, or a price hike. But that can be a gross oversimplification of what is really happening. 

The author of this thread is a business advisor who says it more often in the result of continued small changes over a period of time, leading to a tipping point which he calls the "Thermocline of Trust."

(A thermocline is scientific term for the temperature layers in a body of water, the point where there is a sudden sharp drop in temperature.)

His thesis is that there is a similar point in the erosion of trust in a business caused by those repeated small changes that finally becomes complete. At that point the customer no longer trusts the business and they are lost. Permanently, and with little to no hope of regaining that trust.

You've all probably experienced this as a customer. A business that has increased prices year after year, just a little, until they have become too expensive for the service they are providing? A product that has declined in quality, just a little, over a long period of time?

A personal example: 

I grew up in Southern California, and was a huge fan of Disneyland. I have many fond memories from the time I was a little kid going with my parents, to a special date that included a romantic dinner at the Blue Bayou, to taking my own children when they were little, and going back with my son when he was just out of college himself. 

But I doubt I will ever return. I think I have reached my Thermocline of Trust with Disney. Prices have risen to well beyond my budget, the parks now require reservations even after you pay the exorbitant entry fee, the lines for rides have Byzantine structures, require their own reservations, and the wait can last for hours, parking is ugly expensive, and even with the reservation system and all its rules the place is still extremely crowded.

Each of these changes has been gradual, and at each step I still would have considered a return trip to be possible. But the cumulative effect is that I no longer trust that Disney can provide an enjoyable experience and I doubt that I will ever return to the park. Well, unless I win that billion-dollar Powerball and can afford to rent the whole place out for a family party!

Honestly, this thermocline analogy makes a lot of sense. But I think it applies to far more than a customer base. I think it applies to nearly every human interaction. 

Think about it. Have you lost a friend not because of a huge falling-out, but because little things eroded your trust until you reached a point where you no longer trusted them and knew you would not change your mind? Irreconcilable differences as grounds for divorce are likely one or both parties losing trust in the other. 

How does this apply to creative pursuits? I think it means we have to be honest with ourselves and our audiences. If we continue to make small compromises in our work, if our quality declines, we may lose our audience.

This isn't to say we shouldn't make changes. Far from it. 

But it does mean that we have to be honest with ourselves about why we are making those changes, and to accept that it may limit our audience IF THAT IS IMPORTANT TO YOU. 

And that's the bottom line. You have to trust yourself to know whether an audience is important and to act accordingly. If it is important, then you have to play fair with that audience, to give them the quality they have come to expect, and to keep their trust.

Because ultimately trust is almost impossible to regain once it is lost.

Grace and Gratitude

Today I am going to share my Patreon post in real time. Usually those posts go up here two weeks after they appear on Patreon; after all, the subscribers over there are paying each month for that early access (and a few other things). But since I’m doing something different for December you’ll be getting December posts in real time. We will resume our normal schedule in January.

It's been one helluva week, a kind of 10-car pile up on the scheduling freeway.

The only "big" thing was Steve's second cataract surgery - which went well. He's delighted with the outcome, back to driving himself around, and generally a big win. I didn't want to have to drive in the dark, cold, and possible rain (the weather cooperated, but you don't trust November weather in Oregon) so we reserved a hotel room across the street from the surgery center. As a bonus I arranged a late checkout, which gave Steve a comfy place to nap between the surgery and post-op check. It was great, however it did mean we were gone from midday Monday to late Tuesday afternoon.

There were a bunch of other things that all happened at once:

There were 2 medical appointments before we left on Monday, the two on Tuesday, two more on Thursday, and one on Friday;

My car battery died, and neither of us has had time to get it replaced;

Steve's dad had a bad fall and ended up in the ER with us keeping up-to-date via text messages from the other side of the country and wondering if we needed to try and get a flight out;

This was the week of a major writing conference which I was attending virtually, except that the streaming on the first day was completely messed up, and I spent several hours trying to watch talks that weren't streaming properly; and,

We learned that a much-admired friend did not recover from surgery and will be taken off life support in the next few hours.

Honestly, it's all a bit overwhelming, and suddenly we are staring down the barrel of the holidays. How did that even happen?

The holidays can be stressful. Family relationships can become even more tangled, expectations may quickly get out of hand, and temptations come at us from all sides: not just food and drink, but emotional temptations of anger, disappointment, and unmet expectations, and the inevitable temptation to overspend.

So, for the month of December I am going to take the expectation of meaningful content off my list. I am going to suspend billing for the month of December, and just post whatever goofy thing I think of for the next month. I will be here, and I hope you all will continue to drop by.

I am going to give myself the gift of time to play, to post things just for fun, to let my inner two-year-old take over the channel for a month, after my last November post on the 27th. I am fortunate that my family by blood are also part of my family of the heart, and I will take time to spend with all of them. I will try to remember all the things for which I am grateful, and to have the grace to be kind and generous with those around me.

I hope you can find ways to relieve some of the pressure from your holidays and enjoy your time with your chosen family.

Happy Holidays!