Time to whine

I don't feel like writing anything terribly useful or instructional today. I've had one heck of a weekend, and I feel a need to complain about it.

Some of you know I have type 1 diabetes. I was diagnosed in 2002, when I was in college, when I finally decided weighing under 100 pounds for no apparent reason was a good reason to go to the doctor. I manage it well, though, and it rarely interferes with my work or my hobbies.

I do, however, like to participate in studies through my doctor's office. For the one I'm doing now, I had to be put on NPH, an older 12-hour insulin, on Friday.

My life has not been the same ever since, and I don't mean that in a good way.

Suddenly I understand why being diabetic used to be such a terrible thing. I was diagnosed after Lantus, the 24-hour insulin on the market, came out, so I'd never known anything but long-acting, even-keel insulin and highly effective, short-acting insulin. NPH, on the other hand, has extreme peaks and valleys in its effectiveness, making it impossible for me to do my usual carb-counting (how I determine the amount of short-acting insulin I take for each meal). I fight extreme lows all day, yet in the morning when I wake up, my blood sugar is sky high.

I had intended to get some work done over the weekend, but it just didn't work out. After crashing Saturday evening and narrowly managing to avoid crashing on Sunday, I just didn't have the time or willpower to work around our other weekend plans. And this morning I had such awful nausea while my blood sugar rapidly dropped from its morning high, that I have to confess I wasn't very productive today, either.

Luckily I should only be on NPH for a week. My next appointment can't come soon enough — I want my life back!

Making time to blog

I've been neglecting my blogs for a long time now, almost all year. I've had a number of things come up throughout the year, until I literally felt like I was barely hanging on, barely able to even manage my client workload, let alone administrative and marketing tasks such as blogging and finding new clients. Put it this way: I have a lot of catching up to do with my email inbox, my freelance income and expense records, and other administrative tasks.

I've been trying harder lately to keep up on my blogs, however. I did miss a week recently, but you'll notice I am trying to get two or three posts up on my blog every week. It's a far cry from the daily posting I used to do, but it's a start.

Part of what I'm doing is trying to make time to blog. A couple of times a week, I make it a point to blog first thing in the morning. This is what I used to do, but with all the trail rides this summer, and feeling pressure to get caught up on the days I didn't go out to the barn in the morning, I'm having to make a real effort now to work this into my schedule. I'm also trying to write and schedule future posts when I have a chance, so that I don't get wrapped up in something else later in the week and forget.

How about you? Do you schedule time for blogging, and when do you find is the best time to do so?

Reading styles: Are you a traditionalist or a multitasker?

For a change of pace, I wanted to talk about an article I saw on NPR on Monday, about reading more than one book at once. If you have 15 minutes or so, listen to the story, maybe while you make your lunch. It's an interesting idea: Why do we feel we have to read one book cover-to-cover before we start the next?

I have to admit, I am pretty traditional in this respect. I don't often read more than one book at once, and I don't even particularly like to "quit" once I start reading a book. Sometimes I'll force myself to read it all the way through, even if I'm not enjoying it.

When I was in college, though, I'd always be reading many books at once. As a literature major, the more lit classes I had, the more books I was reading — sometimes more than one at once for one class! Plus I always had something I was reading for pleasure (though I finished those novels much slower when I was reading a lot of books for classes).

I never had any trouble keeping them straight, yet since I graduated, I've still returned to thinking of it like a violation of some rule if I read more than one book at once. I recently read a couple of short stories (ebooks) while I was reading other books, and even that felt a little like I was pushing the envelope.

What about you? Do you regularly read more than one book at once? As writers, we have to be good at multitasking, but do you make use of that skill in your leisure activities — or are you a rigid traditionalist about reading one book at once, like I am?

An unexpectedly quiet night at home

I was originally supposed to babysit this evening, so Michael made plans with a friend. (I still babysit for a family I started with in college. It's been six years, and I've known their two younger children from the time they were teeny babies, so it's a labor of love as well as a welcome source of cash on the side.)

Turns out they don't need me to babysit after all, so my evening is unexpectedly free, and I've been happily deciding how to spend it.

Today wasn't the most productive day, so I think the first thing I'm going to do is get some more work done. I just got several new projects in, and I'm eager to get started on something fresh and different, after struggling all day to focus on one single article.

And oh, how could I plan a quiet evening alone without reading? I'm currently reading Dracula in Love, and enjoying it very much. An hour or so alone with my book sounds fantastic.

I am also thinking about going somewhere for all this lovely alone time. Maybe it sounds counterintuitive, but I've been home all day, and it hasn't really been working for me. I'm debating between Starbucks and Tokyo Joe's — both are close and provide wireless, although I must say sushi sounds more appealing than anything else at the moment!

Since most evenings I spend eating dinner and watching movies with my husband, it's nice to have an evening to myself for a change. What about you? How do you like to spend your quiet evenings alone — and how often do you get them?

Holiday weekend aftermath

I didn't get much done over the holiday weekend. I meant to, but from the time Michael was home (he took off on Thursday and Friday) until this morning, the working part of my brain pretty much shut itself off completely. I prefer to think of it as that I needed the vacation, rather than as a continuation of some of the problems focusing that I've had lately.

Anyway, after a weekend of relaxing, spending time with my husband and his family, and riding my horse, I have four client articles to catch up on, plus I need to respond to two client emails that got rather lost in the shuffle last week. It doesn't sound like much when I condense it into one sentence like that, but it is a lot of work that I need to get done ASAP!

Do you have anything you are playing catchup on after the holiday weekend?

Sleep schedule struggles

Who here remembers when I used to sleep until noon every day, easily? I usually worked from midnight until 3am or 4am, then went to bed and slept late. In the afternoon after I got up, I usually blogged, networked, and browsed the job boards, and at night I would get the real work done. Because no one was awake to bother me, and because I am a night person and have the most focus then, I was able to work much faster than I can during the day.

A number of factors made me have to change my schedule. Having a horse and sharing a car with my husband (in order to go ride said horse) were two major factors, but I think the biggest was when my cat Prince got sick last fall. He stopped eating sometime around October, so I was force feeding him, which meant getting up extra early in order to get some food into him before I went out to the barn or whatnot.

Even after Prince passed away in April, I kept my earlier schedule, which I was proud of. It means I get up earlier on the weekends and have more time to spend with my husband, which we both like. It also meant I was going for trail rides a couple mornings a week, and I've found the morning activity makes me less likely to be sleepy later on in the day.

The drawback is that I'm not as productive during the day. Other people are awake, so I spend more time checking email, Facebook, and blogs. But for nearly a year now, I've made it work, and I've been pleased.

Until Wednesday. I worked until 3am to meet a deadline, and then read for another hour. Although I was up at 8:30 the next morning anyway, I was groggy and tired. I went back to bed, and didn't get up again until nearly noon. Then yesterday, I also slept until noon, after staying up late again to finish a book (The Help, by Kathryn Stockett — awesome book).

I was so worried that my sleep schedule would be permanently messed up, so I made myself go to bed earlier last night, and got up at 9:30 this morning. Unfortunately, now I'm getting sleepy. (Dehydrated, I'm sure!) Time for a coffee beverage and a little blogging break!

After staying focused on work, I think my schedule is one of my biggest struggles as a freelancer. What are yours?

The breaks system

One of the subjects that I talk about on my blog a lot is time management. I find it can be very difficult sometimes to focus on work without checking email, Facebook, Craigslist, or the blogs I follow. Depending on how motivated I am to work on a certain project, sometimes I get the urge to do this about every five minutes. Resisting can be quite the challenge!

Lately I've been trying to operate on a breaks system. Instead of trying to focus on work for an entire day or a half day, I try to get about an hour's worth of work done — a client's blog post, interviewing a source, outlining an article, or doing some research on a new topic. When the goal is accomplished, I take a short mental break — browse the Internet, get a snack, or even read a little (I've been reading a lot lately). Sometimes (less often) I do some mundane chore, like laundry, just to make me move around a little before I go back to work.

I've also been trying not to work through lunch anymore, something I've done on and off (but primarily on) for years. Instead I try to get some quality work done before and after lunch, but let myself read a book or a couple of blog posts while I eat.

And of course, I've been visiting the barn a lot this summer, usually in the mornings. This is the trickiest to accommodate in my schedule, because it can take up half a day when I have a lesson or go for a trail ride. The end result is that I have to work harder and faster in the afternoon, and maybe even a little into the evening. But on the flip side, I tend to feel more energetic when I start the day with a ride, and less likely to let my attention wander when I get back to work.

I think the issue of breaks can be a challenging one for freelancers. When you work for someone, you guard your breaks jealously, but when you work for yourself — when you don't get paid for that time, and always have some client project to finish before you can invoice them — it's easy to forget.

I think breaks are just as important for freelancers, however — perhaps more so, when you consider that sometime you are your most demanding boss. When I give myself more breaks, I actually find I tend to be more productive.

What about you? Do you find that you do or don't need regular breaks? How do you determine when you take them, and how do you spend them?