I worked weekends for many years. Matter of fact, I worked 7 days a week, 365 days a year, for close to two decades. When you run a small business, there are no days off. Down days, sometimes, but there is always something that can be done, needs to be done, do it or you'll starve and the babies will, too. I'm still recovering from that level of workaholicism. Totally a word, autochecker, shuddup.
The nice thing about having a day job is I put in my 40 hours a week and I'm done. I'm not cleared for overtime (yet) so that's all and there is no more. This is... a relief. I can walk out of work at the end of my day and not think about it until I have to go back in. The other thing I find oddly light and, hm, not sure of the right word for this. Empowering? I find it odd to walk into work with nothing in my hands. Just me. They want me for my brain and are happy to have that. I spent so many years as an entertainer packing in equipment, supplies, balloons, paint... now I can walk in with my badge and that's sufficient for the day (yes, I usually have wallet, keys, phone, and lunch, that's all for me, though).
The other nice thing about working 'normal' weeks is that I have weekends off. In theory, this means I have time to relax, rest, unwind, and get ready for another workweek. In reality I am cramming all of Life into two short days with one of them being a day that traditionally all the businesses (and especially anything governmental related) are closed on. I wind up being grateful to go back to work, most Mondays. Work is slower paced than home is on the weekend. Usually. Not always. I was very happy to get home and try to put work aside today.
And then I sit here and feel guilty I'm not writing. The creative part of my mind is broken, a little. I'm hanging up a sign on some string that says 'go away. Try again later' because there are no fiction words when I open that door. It's a vast echoing abyss and I'm afraid of what will look back at me if I look in there. So I'm not gonna. You can't make me.
Time trickles by a week at a time, until I look up and wonder what happened to January. It feels like it was gone in a moment. I've been tracking, you see, all my daily things to see how well I'm performing. My metrics are not good, in some areas. In others? Well, I managed art every day this month (every day this year, if I want to sound more impressive.) No, I haven't been sharing it on the blog. Well, sort of. A lot of the header images are daily art pieces. But if I put up a post that's just art, the hits fall way off, which I figure is a clue that I'm boring you and you don't want it. So I don't do it. Besides, art is less about being good for other people, and more about being my daily san check. If I can't manage art, things are way, way off.
It's winter. Which is... not bad, relative to where I've spent most of my life. It's not snowing a ton, it's not even below freezing all of the time. It is, however, gray and sunless and my psoriasis is flaring because even though I can't take the sun due to lackopigment (no, it's not just fair skinned redhead, it's that my body has a grudge against itself and decided about ten years ago it was going to war with my melanocytes. So my killer immune system, the derps, have taken out what little pigmentation I had to begin with, and most of my skin is now translucent. But I digress). My relationship with the star I'm in orbit around is complicated. I need to have sunshine. I also need to limit my exposure, because too much of a good thing, etc. I ordered a grow lamp. I'm going to put it in the fixture that is right over my desk at home. I'll report back in a couple of weeks as to how that went. If I turned green and started to sprout, it didn't work.
So to crunch the numbers for January 2020:
Non-fiction wordcount - 14945 words, over 25 days of personal blogging and my weekly MGC posts.
Fiction wordcount - 5882, an anemic performance, but better than zero.
Days of Art - 31
Now I have a benchmark to measure February against. I don't want to compete with anyone but me, but I'm hoping this data collection will help me get some impetus toward creating and producing. We shall see. It worked at least for a while with me and weightloss. I need to get back on that wagon, too. Job transitions are rough.
oh yeah, today's art is Spincycle. Seemed appropriate.
