Here I am, 35% through a comprehensive edit of someone else’s book. I have a sixty hour training course for Denodo I have to complete by Wednesday (Denodo is a data analytics “staging” program), work has been super busy lately, we’re ramping up to sell our house, I may very well be getting the IP rights for the card game I’ve been working on, and I can’t help but think this isn’t the way things were supposed to be.
In my mind, I was supposed to graduate from college, have lots of newfound free time, start a blog where I could write casually and keep a low profile, working on several novels, then launch myself and crank up the advertising. But that doesn’t seem to be God’s plan.
I feel overwhelmed. The current cardgame IP holder said I could put my design efforts on the backburner, and it’s remained simmering there (for the most part). But if I end up owning the actual rights to the cardgame, well, things could get interesting.
None-the-less, it’s still on the back-burner and no contracts have been pushed my way … for now. So that leaves work, the manuscript, a never-ending queue of home projects, and the training.
Since I have an eight week deadline on the manuscript, I decided to push it aside so I can focus on the training course. I’ve got to be ready for next Wednesday’s meeting, no matter what. Like I said, this is a career opportunity I’d be foolish to squander.
And of course since Christopher Columbus has been declared persona non grata by the mainstream media, my work no longer observes it as a day off. Too bad. Monday would’ve been a blessing.
So I’ve been stuck in my office all day working on this thing, and it’s complicated. My brain doesn’t like switching between huge projects. I really want to keep working on the manuscript until I’m done, but I’m being forced to change gears from something very creative to something very technical. My brain no likey. It’s screaming at me to go play a video game, or do anything but this. (That’s why I’m blogging right now–I needed a break from all that training.) But I keep imagining myself in that meeting completely lost, having to explain why I didn’t do the training. Would not be good.
If things keep going this way, I may very well need the full eight weeks for the manuscript edit. I wonder when I’ll finally be able to start writing my own stories again?
Nick Enlowe 