My Writing Season Has Begun

DSCN3173My daughter went back to school last week—full day for the first time ever. I did exactly what I had planned to do her first two days back—whatever I wanted! I napped, I read, I just relaxed.

Now, however, it’s time to get some work done.

I’d like to set some sort of schedule for the school day, a schedule that incorporates exercise, work, and what I call personal projects. Personal projects are things like photo albums or listening to music or doing genealogy—things that are necessary, that build up over time, and slowly become overwhelming if not attended to.

I have often lamented the inherent imbalance in my life since my child was born. I would either spend all my free time writing, thus getting behind on my personal projects, or divert to some of the personal projects, which then allowed my writing to languish. So I am hoping, with 6+ hours of child-free time 5 days a week, I can now find some sort of schedule where I can move both sets of projects forward at the same time, and thereby not feel the pressure of having so much undone work staring at me.

So one of my goals this week is to sketch out a weekly schedule and see how that works. I know things will come up that derail it from time to time, but I am a person of routine. I like my routines. I think that’s one reason this past summer was so wearing on my nerves—I had no routine for my work.

I purposely left my schedule as loose as possible because I wanted my daughter to have a “free” summer. We had karate and swimming, but the rest of the time was unstructured play or trips to various play places or to the park or play dates. It was great for her, not so great for me!

Now school is here and we are all routinized again. I look forward to my writing season and can’t wait to see where it takes me!

Do you have a writing season, or is your routine the same all year round?

Comments

  1. Last three years I had extended absences from work due to sickness, but found I got a lot of writing done during those absences. Also in the past, I found that when I came back from any vacation, I got a lot done. I guess you can say that mine has a seasonal pattern – most of the sick events happened during winter, so I got a lot of writing done during that time. Now I’m in the pattern of editing and rewriting. More of it gets done on my days off from day job. When I finally get good news (acceptances, reviews, etc.) I find that everything happens at once, so I might show up at Coffeehouse with a long list of good happenings. It doesn’t happen often but when it does, it’s sweet. 🙂
    I enjoyed your post.
    Barbara of the Balloons
    Barbara of the Balloons.

    • Everything does always seem to happen at once, doesn’t it? Thanks for the comment, Popple. See you at the Coffeehouse!

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  1. […] my daughter started full-time Kindergarten in September, I celebrated. I was full of plans for how to break out my days and how to balance home-work […]

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