Why I need better time management

I am procrastinating while I write this.

By reading an article about procrastination.

Specifically, why writers procrastinate.

My long-term goals

It occurred to me after my last post, about weeding unnecessary and unhelpful things from my life, that I should probably ask myself the question, What ARE my long-term goals?

Of course, as I'm sure is the case with everyone, that's not a simple question -- nor does it have a simple answer.  But I'll take a crack at answering it, because I think it'll help me do more weeding.

Weeding

Yesterday I mentioned all the goals that I'm juggling: freelancing, blogging, working on my novels, ebook ideas, projects around the house, riding more frequently, practicing the piano, reading... and that's on top of the work I do with kids and at the barn.  It's too much to manage a lot of the time, and as a result about half of those things fall by the wayside at any one time.

The solution is, of course, to do fewer things... but I have to confess, I like having lots of interests.  I don't want to completely give up some things in order to spend more time on others.  So what I need to do, for me, is figure out what things I'm wasting my time doing -- and get rid of them.

Busy summer

My apologies for neglecting my blog this summer.  Even though I was no longer nannying regularly, I had picked up a couple of new families on an as-needed basis.  In addition, halfway through the summer V. and A.'s parents started asking for my help here and there.  And in the gaps in between, I was freelancing, working at the barn, doing projects around the house, and trying to carve out some free time here and there.

As a result, I was fairly busy until the kids went back to school this week.  Not as busy as I've been in previous summers -- not as busy as last summer -- but still busy enough that I completely forgot to blog all summer.

NaNoWriMo at Denver Comic Con!

This past weekend was Denver Comic Con.  I should have posted sooner, but I haven't been very good about maintaining my blogs, and by the time I thought about it Comic Con was underway -- and then I was too busy to post before the end.

My co-ML for the Denver region, who is fantastic and has been an ML for many years, arranged with Comic Con for us to have a table there again, like we did at last year's Comic Con.  And this year, I was on a panel to talk about NaNoWriMo!

Hooky by day, writer by night

My plan to reestablish my freelance writing schedule this week backfired.  Over the weekend I found a piano, and will be meeting the movers at the thrift store tomorrow.  I expect the move to take up a major chunk of my day.  On top of that, I have some help with household projects available to me this week, so I decided to take advantage of it.

It helps, of course, that my biggest client is on hiatus at the moment, which has freed up a little time in my schedule.

Of course, the nice thing about freelancing is that I don't have to totally play hooky.

My writing schedule: Snafus and goals

My freelance writing schedule has become totally unrecognizable, and needs to be revived.

The shakeup has definitely been caused by the events of the last month.  I was sick for two weeks, which did the worst damage -- it was a butt-kicking kind of cold, especially the cough, and I didn't feel like doing anything while it was hanging on.  I gave up a lot of babysitting (as much because parents didn't want to expose their kids as because I didn't feel well), and didn't get all that much freelancing done, either.

Last week and this week I babysat a lot, which kept me from reestablishing my freelancing schedule.  Plus, I had a lot of stuff to do last week that had been ignored when I was sick -- like cleaning, and laundry.  And then this week I had to get ready for company, so more time was devoted to cleaning and finishing up projects.

I'm hoping for a return of sanity next week, especially since I don't babysit until the end of the week, which should give me several solid days of freelancing.