The problem with “everything” is that it ends up looking an awful lot like nothing: just one long haze of frantic activity, with all the meaning sheared away.
Katherine May, Wintering: How I learned to flourish when life became frozen
One of the most unfortunate things about humanity is that experience makes our best teacher. I wish that weren’t the case – imagine what we could achieve if the lessons our parents learned were passed via hereditary memory – but it’s simply fact. Even the best of us who take those parental instructions to heart are only able to do so with a sort of distant acceptance. Closer than reading history, but not by much.
Thankfully, however, experience turns out to be great at its job. Anyone touch a hot stovetop as a kid? Cut that shit out real quick, huh? It’s not always so abrupt of a lesson, and most of the time the cause and effect is much more subtle, but we make do with what we have.
As I’ve mentioned in previous articles, during the creation of the first draft of Residuum, I ran face first into a brick wall of burnout. Life gave me a cocktail of overload and I shotgunned it. I was working 11+ hour days, writing a novel, working out, trying to spend time with my family and finding time for prayer, and doing contract writing for the unannounced game that I’ll eventually be able to discuss. I didn’t want this to be true, but something had to give and it turned out to be the novel. Then the exercise. Then, somehow, also the family time. And the praying. My contract writing suffered. My life was work, then zoning out. The thought of picking up any of the things I’d dropped was daunting. It meant stacking my plate again. It meant rebuilding. Starting over in some cases. Acknowledging I’d screwed up and making steps to remedy that.
I’d like to say I manned up and did just that, but I’m not here to lie. Eventually work settled a bit and I found that I was bored with my distractions. I put more effort into the contract and things slowly – very slowly – returned to normalcy.
Well, they say life rhymes. My list of clients at work has suddenly become very active with a laundry list of Big Deal needs and tight timelines. I’m in the weeds editing Residuum and trying to figure out how to get started hunting for beta readers and critique partners. I’m outlining my next novel. I’m on a regimented exercise program and spending at least an hour a night watching a show (Currently My Hero Academia) with the kids, then reading them a book and praying with them. I’ve got my weekly articles and I’m looking to start maintaining a few other social media platforms. And as of this week, I’ve picked up a contract to come on and handle the rest of the story and lore for the first season of the aforementioned game.
The minute I accepted that contract I had a bit of a moment. The lightbulb of recognition went off and I realized what I was staring at. I knew what it meant. Or, at least, what it had meant.
That night I went home and started planning. I looked at the hours I have in the day, at how many are used by things that can’t be changed and what that left me in open time, and started allocating what was left. I’m still not done – this is going to be a work-in-progress effort for a bit to smooth out rough edges – but I have the basics of a plan. I’m not walking in blind like I did before. God willing, that will be enough. Experience will serve.
If you’re following me here or on the other socials (Which will be in the social bar on the contact page / anywhere else I end up putting it) and feel like I’m slipping, failing to meet deadlines, or getting close, give me a good prodding. Others’ expectations matter, particularly when I’ve made a commitment to them to get things done. I don’t expect it’ll come to that, but I didn’t back then either and look where it got me.
Until next week, friends. Godspeed.
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