ISO: My motivation

I don't know what it is about today --if I'm rebounding from my busy summer so far, or if it's because I know I'm on vacation, or both -- but today I woke up without my motivation.

I had planned to spend today on client work, novel writing, and some cleaning and other projects around the house.  When I woke up, however, I felt so blah that I ended up just turning on the TV for a little bit (something I rarely do).  After a couple hours (!), I made myself turn it off and work on some of my client work.

Commence vacation week!

This week I'm on vacation from my nanny job -- actually, from most of my jobs, since two of the families I babysit for are out of town, as well.  I don't have any work -- other than taking care of my primary employers' dog while they are out of town -- until the weekend.

Except for writing work, of course.

The science of breaks

Yesterday there was an article going around Facebook about how taking smartphone breaks at work can make you feel more positive about your workday.  It's something a lot of us freelancers already know: We are more productive when we allow ourselves breaks in between focused working sessions.

Writing for me vs. writing for them

I haven't always made a ton of progress on my fiction over the past two and a half years, but I have definitely had more time to work on it after I backed off on freelancing and started working as a nanny part-time, back in November 2011.  Before that, when I was freelancing full-time, it was as though I felt I couldn't work on my own projects while I always had client work waiting in the wings.

Since I took the nanny job, however, I have been freelancing less and less.  I started out intending to freelance part-time, so I kept on a few clients.  I didn't do any marketing, though, and they slowly fizzled out.

Hump week

This week marks the halfway point through summer, if you don't count the week off I have while the family I work for is on vacation.  And boy, am I feeling it!  Just like on "hump day" halfway between Monday and Friday, I'm dragging.  I've been working a lot of hours this week, and although the weeks go quickly in retrospect, I feel like I'm too busy.  I have that feeling like I'm just treading water and waiting for summer to end, so I can get on with the business of swimming.

Summer begins

The kids I nanny for got out of school last Tuesday, but today is my first actual day of my summer schedule -- they had family in town end of last week, so they gave me the rest of the week off.  I wanted to get more done than I actually did -- freelancing, marketing, maybe even work on my novel a little -- but I didn't actually do that badly, either.  It's a start.

It's going to be a busy summer -- fortunately or unfortunately, depending on how you look at it.

Managing my time as a freelancer again

I've taken a few freelance gigs here and there, so once again I am managing my time as a freelancer.  This is the first time I've taken regular freelance work (more than just a one-off job) in a long time, probably almost two years.  With everything else going on in my life at the moment, I'm finding it challenging to maintain freelancing, marketing, and blogging alongside nannying and babysitting, and working on my novel has gone out the window entirely since I started freelancing.