Isn't April over yet?

Crikey.

In March, I was on the mountain top, communing with Walter the Muse. In April, I'm in the valley, and Walter's gone to the beach. Seriously, it's like Ground Hog Day on April 1.

I'm transitioning out of the old day job. I'm still going in for a couple hours a week to do paperwork and banking, and scheduling and inventory if it's needed. I hope to be able to dump it all on my replacement mid-May and walk away with my tiny 401k.

The new day job has taken a few more hours a week. It's mostly set up right now--opening a bank account, putting together files, choosing software, and suchlike. It's fun, really, but it does take time. I'm working with grown-ups again, and that's a big improvement. We have our first preview service May 14.

On top of that, I have two trips lined up in the next two weeks. It's family stuff and should be fun, but the timing (as is almost always the case) could be better. I hope to be able to relax a little at the very least.

And then there's the news that a close family member is facing a long illness. They caught it super early and have to do more tests to figure out a treatment plan. On the other side of the family we are dealing with a recent suicide.

In the miscellaneous irritant category, I'm upgrading from my 23" iMac (Little Mac) to Eric's 27" iMac (Big Mac) so I can donate Little Mac to the church. That's meant a lot of moving data from one machine to the other, or into cloud storage. I think I'm in the home stretch, but it hasn't been smooth or fast. On the plus side we found a bunch of old pictures and it's been fun to look through them.

Writing? Yeah. I've got some words in, but not many. In the last week or so, it's been more a matter of sitting down and typing stuff that may or may not be cut later on the good days. On the not so good days, I stare at my documents before going back downstairs for coffee and Netflix.

To say this vacation is much needed is a bit of an understatement. I hope, during the first, to have an hour or so a day to get some words in, even if it's just free writing. The second week it's less likely to happen, but it is possible. When I get back I'll have a week before the preview service to get all the details associated with my job squared away. Until this morning I had it in my mind that I'd come back from the second week away and have the preview the next day. Realizing I have a week in between has lowered the stress level somewhat. It means I don't have to do my entire page-long to do list today.

So, yeah, come on, May!

Life in all its glory

You must imagine I'm saying that title of this post with a slightly skeptical tone. Perhaps even with the faint wisp of sarcasm. It's been one of those weeks for most of the month and maybe even two months.

This angst is triggered by my ongoing health battles with my heart, diabetes, and IBD. A nasty threesome guaranteed to take the wind out of anyone's sails and even maybe sink their ship so that only a debris whirlpool is left that the gulls circle in hopes of finding some morsel.... Okay, that was a bit much even for me.

The whine wind is strong today. Brace yourselves. You might need to rope together.

Anyway, in terms of creative projects, I'm struggling with Floozy Comes Back. It is difficult to be funny constantly at the best of times, but lately, it's quite a struggle. It may be my health, or it may be the spring doldrums. Some people experience doldrums in winter, some in summer, some in fall, but for me, it's spring. Spring makes me restless. Makes me want to do something physically and mentally exciting. Spring fever, I guess, to use an old cliche.

In other news, I've been investigating magazines that allow online submissions. It's a curious lot. No standards among them--this one wants PDFs, this one wants TXT, this one wants .DOC but not .DOCX and so on. The other thing of note is most of these online submissions don't seem to pay. They want your words--they need your words--but they don't pay. Of course, they're struggling and probably need our support.

Some do pay, and the competition for them is fierce. They almost all recommend you submit to the non-paying magazines first to build your portfolio and gain experience. And some of that urging might be prompted by remembering their early days when they, too, couldn't pay because of their newborn status in the publishing world.

I am also weighing the prospects of publishing a Blackbirds Fourth Flight. Reasons for and reasons against. Budgets, time, material available, etc. No urgency there, but its file is sitting on my desk for me to look through now and again.

Anyway, let's end this ramble. This week, I'm:
- continuing my exercise program.
- writing on Floozy, so help me muse!
- doing my chores.
- getting a presentation ready for the next writers group meeting.

How is your week looking?

Moving on

It's official, and I can talk about it. I'm leaving the fro yo shop to be the Ministry Coordinator at Boulevard Presbyterian Church. Our goal is to serve two neighboring but very different communities. One is a fairly affluent suburb with almost no bible believing churches, and the other is a part of Chicago that makes the news a lot. I'm excited about this new opportunity. Part time admin jobs are hard to come by around here.

I gave notice at the old job today. Sort of. Turns out, the district manager who was not mine quit suddenly, so my DM has to pick up the slack, at least in the short term. That gives her 3 pizzerias and 2 fro yo shops, and none of them are particularly close geographically. I'm going to continue to do paperwork and deliver it to the office until June 1 or she no longer needs me, whichever comes first. That will amount to about 3 hours a week, including the part of my commute I get paid for during paperwork delivery.

It feels like the last two weeks have been super busy, and I'm worn slam out. I'm only posting today because I don't want to break my streak. As long as I do something writing related, it counts, so here I am. I'm sure it goes without saying I have an early night in my future.

So that's where I am. Where are y'all?

March Wrap Up

Wow, that month went fast. It's been a 'head down and gitter done' kind of month. It wasn't without disappointment, though. I realized yesterday if I pushed a little bit more, I could double my word count for the year. I tried. I stared at the screen, turned on some music, and pestered Walter The Muse, but there were no words. I finally saved everything I'd already done and walked away, planning to hit it again after dinner. It didn't happen. I missed my goal by 895 words.

I'm actually not too broken up about it. It was a really good month despite the day job challenges. I continued my streak of writing every day, and put in nearly 57 hours. Total word count for the month was 27,443, bringing year to date to 55,781.

I also read quite a bit. Currently I'm reading "The War of Art" by Steven Pressfield (I read it often and highly recommend it), and "The Story Equation" by Susan May Warren. I also read all of Susan May Warren's Heiress Trilogy ("Heiress," "Baroness," and "Duchess") again.

Based on my progress this month, I'm awfully glad I went to Deep Thinkers last month. It seems to be just what I needed to get things rolling. Here's to April!