Mortaine’s Blog

I probably work so much so that I can avoid stuff– usually other work commitments. I don’t generally avoid emotional stuff, though– I tend to charge right in and face up to my realities pretty well. Except the one which has me realizing that I have too much to do, and need to cut back.

I think I also do a lot because I really enjoy starting projects, and I like to envision them, but I don’t always see them through to the end. Or, I do see them through eventually, but not in the timeline that others would have preferred. I’ve always been that way, even in elementary school. I almost failed the 5th grade because I had to do book reports. My 5th grade teacher didn’t think I was much of a reader, and surprised my mom by suggesting that I didn’t read much. My mom was stunned, because of all the subjects in school that she thought I would do poorly at, reading was not one of them.

When I was a kid, I would turn off my bedside light when I heard my mom’s foot on the bottom step downstairs. She’d come upstairs and check on me (of course), and sometimes, she would put her hand over the lightbulb. Since the bulb was still hot, she could always tell that I wasn’t really asleep.

So finding out that I wasn’t handing in my book reports really ticked Mom off. She didn’t like the idea that I was having trouble in school because of reading. I finally handed in the last book report. . . . on the last day of school.

So, I’m a huge procrastinator. But I get things done eventually, and I work very quickly because I’m used to rushing to finish things at the last minute.

Oh, and another of my procrastination techniques– sleep. I tend to sleep a lot more when I am under a lot of stress and pressure. Strangely, sleeping does help me work quite a bit– I’ve actually solved a lot of work-related (writing) problems during a sleep session. When I was freelancing and writing my books, I would get into a pattern of sleeping for 6 hours in the morning, getting up and working for 4 hours, taking a nap from about 2 until 6, getting up, having dinner and some evening time with my husband, and then going back to work from 10 until 2 AM. It meant I slept 10 hours a day (but I was tired), sometimes more. But it also meant that I had a 4-hour time during which I was almost guaranteed to be undisturbed by phone calls and friends just dropping by (not because they think I’m bored, but because they are).

Of course, I’m thinking about sleep right now because it’s just after 10, I just got up, and I slept so much that I have a headache now. Eck. At least I won’t have to worry about getting too much sleep starting tomorrow– I have to be at work at 8:30 tomorrow morning! Yuck!

What a busy day!

I went out to breakfast this morning with John, which was very pleasant. After breakfast, I came back and wrote my database programmer’s guide– I’m not sure if it’s even in the ballpark, honestly, for what I needed to have done. But I guess I’ll see. I did some work also on my Information Architecture project, mostly just fiddling around with the project plan and showing it to John for his feedback.

I had office hours from 1 until 4 today– my first round of Saturday office hours. Whee. While I was in office hours, I edited Mom’s website, which she appreciated. She called a little after 4 to talk to me about the pages, and to ask me to make a couple of minor changes. We’re going to think (again) about how to automate the weekly updates for her this year.

I start work a little over 40 hours from now. Wow. Hard to believe, but I’m really excited about the new job. It’s a lot of responsibility, though, and I worry that I won’t be up to it. I am also scared that my other commitments will make my new job less fun– it’s hard to enjoy your work when you’re effectively working 3 jobs at once. I guess I just want to have the freedom and time to focus on one project at a time. For once. Of course, every time I start to let up on my commitments, I end up “filling in the space” with another commitment– not a very good plan, I suppose.

As soon as the exam is over next weekend, and my certificate is done next month, I will feel a lot more relieved, time-wise. Of course, then I’ll just be committed to writing some open source APIs, teaching three online courses, running a roleplaying game, being a wife, and (possibly) writing another book. I’m probably going to have to drop the API stuff for now– I haven’t been able to find time to work on it anyway, and I can always re-volunteer later.

The game and the book go hand-in-hand, if I even get the book contract. Teaching. . . . I need to cut back on teaching, definitely. It’s not really helping anyone, if I don’t have time to respond to student queries and give feedback on their assignments.