Busy is good.

Well, Here I am again ponying up with a new blog after what seems like forever. In truth I have been busy with work and family and volunteer society stuff. Actually I am smokin busy right now.
I am posting here because I just had my moments of zen out in the hot tub and I feel all relaxy and inspired. That is good too because I pulled a calf muscle yesterday in the last five minutes of the football game so I have been hobbling around all day, and probably for another week. It is showing improvement though so no tears and I will heal. We won incidentally, and beat a team that thumped us 42-0 a few weeks back. So good play by all. Go Rats!

I came to post about being busy. I am beginning the edits for the completion of Island Writer Magazine. I have all the submissions and the winners as chosen by the editorial board. So I am about to start the formating, layout business which will take up the rest of my time until I go on a well deserved vacation to celebrate my 2oth anniversary. Both of these things are both superinspirational and motivating. I want to get as much done on the mag so I can relax when I am gone. I also want to get the magazine ready for whenI return so I can do some quick art additions and ad placement and go the the printers. It's one of those things that seem like if it's done well it will be great feather in my cap. If not, I will have to live with that shame, at least until the next issue. It made me realize that the busier you get, the more you get done. Everything really does seem to connect to everything else, and the more you get on your plate the more you get through. MAybe you don't nail everthing perfectly, but you accomplish more of each in the same amount of time you might have used to do one thing. I once heard that "If you shoot for the moon and miss, you still have reached a target most people won't even try for. "

Good advice.
Go get something else to add to your mix. See how it adds to your need to be organized lets you get more done. And don't forget my favorite phrase of the year "How would I be doing this if I was willing to let it be easy."

Lary

It isn't about time, it's about action

I thought the key was to manage time, but the funny thing is you can't. Time is constant and irreversible, it plods ever onward regardless of what we do. You cannot manage five minutes into six. The key is action, or rather to manage the action, the activity, that you are doing in time. Gettting control of the tasks at hand and ensuring there is time set aside to do them. I have also learned that if it's a small job, you can do it now and now not waste the energy to find it on a list and think abot it again. This is for really small jobs that can be completed in two minutes or less.
For me this is relatively new, but I think it's working. I am being more productive when I need to be. I can't take the credit for this epiphany I learned it from Getting Things Done, which might turn out to be a great book for me to keep track of multiple roles and multiple projects.

As time goes by, and other music interludes..

T, t, t, ticking away the moments that make up a dull day..... (Pink Floyd)


Time is of the essence. For the past month I have become acutely aware of time. It is a precious commodity available each day in a finite amount. I am amazed at how easily it is wasted. A moment here as my children show me some great moves in their latest video game conquest, or a television show that catches you and holds your attention, either because it is inane crap or an absolute gem of writing and production. The fact remains that unless my intent at that moment was to watch it there is something else that I could be doing. I am resolved to make better conscious use of my time throughout the day. Not because I am a miracle of over-achievement and organization, but because a little conscious effort in this way might drastically improve my efficiency. Improved efficiency does several things. One is to get what needs doing out of the way, and that leaves more time for the time to enjoy life and family and music and movies and books and all those things that get backlogged by business.

Well, that's all the time I have for this. I will schedule regular posts so I can be efficient at this too.
Lary

Summer Heat

I love the summer sun.
The yellow-white ball of it beaming light and heat down until it feels like pressure on your skin. Your temperature rises. Your skin reacts over time. You sweat. You drink fluids and bask like a lizard warming through. Ahh, it's good for you too. Vitamin D without supplements going directly into your system. Hot and sticky and drippy and flushed.
I'm in shorts and a t-shirt now, but earlier working outside in pants and boots... hair wet and slick, my shirt front damp, rivulets ran from behind my ears and from my forehead. An almost perfect summer day.
Yes, I was wet and sweaty, but it was good. I worked outside, I accomplished a task and enjoyed the work. I mopped my brow more than once and stood back satisfied and fulfilled and reminded every moment, that it's not winter.
Oh god I'm so glad it's not winter.
Go outside. Bask, and enjoy, and remember (George R.R. Martin fans), Winter is coming.
Lary

How do I do that again?

With the summer upon us and life/work/money stress building steadily I found myself ready to spend a few minutes posting here. That was in the beginning of June. I never posted because I couldn't remember how to log in to my Blogger account. Honestly it was like when someone asks your phone number and it's just gone. My brain was too full, and pushed the little used stuff away.
I tried a few times but still couldn't get in and then my quick post became an exercise in frustration. The few spare moments I dedicate to these ramblings was rapidly eroding. Finally, I walked away intending to try again later. Well, later came and went, and then a real emergency event happened. My Daughter broke her leg. My beautiful 8 year old slipped from the monkey bars which resulted in a spiral fracture of her tibia. Like most hospital visits, this became a hurry up and wait program. Eventually she ended up in a cast from thigh to foot, because they want to hold the knee still, to keep the tendons from pulling on the bones. Spiral Fractures can be tricky, but luckily no surgery was required and she is healing well.
I had the fracture explained to me this way: Imagine snapping a pencil in half. You can fit the pieces back together most of the time and it will hold the original shape of the pencil. Now imagine gripping the pencil firmly in both hands and twisting in different directions until it separates. The twisting separates the fibres differently and it doesn't hold itself back together so easily. So here we go into summer with my girl in a cast for three months. We have already had the five week cast change and are on the way to a smaller one in three more weeks. A tough way to spend a summer when you're turning 9.

Anyway, I am back , I remember how to get here, and I expect to post again soon.
Later.

The Now

I truly wish I could live in the now like a Zen master. As yet I do not have the secret. I get angry, sad happy confused etc. The Now seems like an unemotional place, distant and removed from hamanity in a good way. Like living outside the ugliness of the negative emotions. But we are drawn to share. We share our pain and suffering more than our joy and happiness. We tend to be suspicious of happy people. We ask; "Are they really happy?" or surmise, "Perhaps he's on drugs."
Yet let someone start telling you their problem or complaining about something and we're often all ears. I blame the TV news. I know I shouldn't cast blame, but seriously, the last time I saw something that cheered me, that made want to clap or shout or laugh on the "news" I cannot remember. And, that is their fault. They choose to show us what we've taught them we want to watch. I am quitting. No more news. I might not be able to live in the now, but I can choose not to live in other peoples pain or sorrow and that's what TV news shares. So I am not watching. I might even stop checking the weather. Than would be zen. I would not care because the weather is just what it is. That would be living in the now. If I want to check weather, I'll go outside and look around.
Maybe I can do this Now thing.
I just have to start small.

As Time Goes By

Well another meeting with the VWS fiction group has passed, and I noticed after that it has been ages in net time since I blogged here.
Where does the time go?
Much has happened since my last post. I started a new position with a great company, Aqua Pacific Pools and Spas, and then the neighbouring building burnt two weeks later. So we have limited access to the shop and no retail at all.
I am doing sporadic work in the field now, service calls for customers openings and repairs.

My novel is itching at me again so it is time to get back to it. Fiction is such an amazing mistress, sometimes you can't wait and sometimes she pushes you away until it's time.

Well, enough for now.
I have a website to create and fiction that needs me.

Last night the VWS had some professional editors in to enlighten us about editing. I learned a few things. There are several steps in an editing process from concept development of an idea to simple proofing for typos. In the middle is editing for all the aspects of structure, theme, content continuity, order and organization, logic, character development, plot line, resolution, conflict and just about any other element of writing you can imagine. But the key here is that an editor is not there to make you cry and point out all the errors in a work. You hire an editor to invest money into a piece the same way you have invested time in its conception. The editor is there as an objective reviewer to point out in a collaborative sense how YOU ,the writer, can make the piece better. An editor works to improve a work one level at a time. A poor essay becomes better, an ok article becomes good, and a good story becomes publishable if you follow the advise of an editor.

The publishing game is a lottery of sorts, and although a piece may now be in a publishable form, the forces of the universe must still conspire to get that piece into the right publisher's hands at the right moment for publication. Once it's ready you must submit it relentlessly to the right publishers until someone accepts. Submission is a different aspect of this writing life.