Oh, friends. I was so excited for September. The trees are already starting to turn and autumn (the best season, fight me) isn’t far away. Plus, for the first time ever, all my responsibilities will be in school, at least for part of the week.
Free time! ahahahahah
Or, at least, that was the plan. I made a list of all the writing things I was going to get done in September. It looks something like this:
-Children’s books
-Nonfiction series
-Finish draft
-Write anthology story
-Edit first chapter on submission novel
-Work on Sekrit Project II
Admittedly, that is a lot of stuff. But I have guaranteed free time! For the first time in years! ahahahah
Unfortunately, two things have combined to destroy all my writing plans.
The first is that I have decided I need a change in day job. Admittedly I’m not really day-jobbing on a regular basis at the moment, but it turns out that editing/working on other people’s stories kills my enthusiasm to work on my own. So in a few years all my responsibilities will be at school full time, and I can go back to work in an industry that is creative, but differently creative.
So I’m learning how to program.
I picked out a course on Coursera and am about halfway done with it. But man, does it take a lot of work! More than I’ve spent working on my freelance and contract jobs in recent years.
That by itself is eating into writing time, but I was also invited to do a mom-specific workout challenge for Sept and Oct. Working out is unnecessarily expensive (why do I need to pay somewhere between $90 and $200 a month?) and this was very cheap, plus I get unlimited classes for the duration of the challenge. They sold the challenge as a chance to get rid of that baby weight, and hey, I do have baby weight floating around.
The class/challenge combo is rough. I’m trying to get to classes at the gym 4-6 times a week, and classes are a hour, then half an hour of commuting…
…and in the end, those two end up more than my free time. Which means writing is…not going as quickly as one would like.
I want to say, “Oh, well, October!” except I’ll still be doing both, so, uh…oh, well, November?
(Except November comes with its own issues, and then we’re into the holidays, and then…)
The class and the challenge are good for me. I can’t really be upset about them. But man, did I misjudge my time.
Looking forward to fall?