We’ve been planning for quite some time to sell the house after youngest graduated from college — a plan that was indescribably far in the future when we came up with it and is now bearing down on us from the high speed lane, without brakes.
It sounds simple enough. Sell the house, buy a smaller one that’s easier to take care of and doesn’t have so much empty space that’s just there to collect junk. And stuff. So much stuff…but I’ve complained about that in other posts. For now, I’ll just say that between getting the house ready for sale (cleaning, painting, fixing, calling contractors, supervising contractors etc. etc.), going through the process of selling (more cleaning, paperwork, phone calls and showings, and then more paperwork, etc.), and finally moving us into someplace new (oh, wait, yes, find a new place while all this is going on, and go through all that paperwork, etc.) my life and schedule are going to be unavoidably disrupted for an unknown amount of time.
That means that planning anything on a tight deadline is not going to work. Planning anything that requires certain things be done at certain times of day is not going to work. I won’t know what days are available for writing or when unexpected tasks, appointments, etc. are going to fling themselves at me from hidden corners. But I don’t want to be totally without goals, either. When I do that, I wind up spending all day playing Fitz or Wordslinger.
After poking around at my goals, at the work I have in progress, and the time I have available, I figured out that most days I’ll have a couple of hours first thing in the morning when I can write. We get up early, so even if I have contractors coming over, I’ll be up before they are.
And I will have other breaks during most days. As long as I know what I’m spposed to be working on, I can make quite a lot of progress. So I’m going back to something that worked for me when the kids were little. I’m putting together a portfolio with half a dozen works in progress to carry with me, and whenever I get a chance I can pull out one of those to work on. When I finish one, I add another to the queue.
That will let me reserve my time at my computer for work that really has to be done at the computer: research, marketing, submissions, and so forth. Oh, and those video games…
Can’t forget Fitz, no.
Hugs. Good luck with everything.
Good luck with your goals this year!
Good idea to keep a variety of projects on hand allowing you to work on whatever strikes your fancy at any moment.