“Are You Able To Handle Shifting Priorities?”

Can I balance being a SAHM and an editor and a writer and a budding novelist? Well, I can do it today.

“Are you able to handle shifting priorities?”

I think of this common interview question often these days. My answer used to be some mixture of examples from previous work experience and B.S. HR managers want to hear. These days my answer would be more like, “Are you kidding me?” In the last 4 months I have taken a new job, lost my daughter’s morning nap, twice shifted which of my three jobs/projects gets most of my available time, and dealt with sleep deprivation due to baby girl’s molars coming in and working with 3 1/2 hours less time per day to work than 4 months ago. It’s not so much shifting priorities as it is a constant sliding scale these days. But that’s okay.

This morning I had a great time at the lake near our house, talking with some mommy friends of mine about work and balancing career with kids. From our conversations I gathered we all deal with this, and the more kids you have the more often you shift priorities or shift plans on how to balance it all. Because I’m a nerd, I wrote down (again) everything I’m dealing with and some possible solutions to the current unsustainable schedule. I’m happy to say I’m heading back into a phase of focusing my efforts on fewer things as well as starting new phases of current projects. I’m excited about it, and for those of you who follow my posts about my journey to becoming a full-time writer/editor, here is a break-down of the new phase that is taking me one step closer to becoming a full-time novelist.

Inhabitat

This hasn’t turned out as planned, with less pay coming in for more work than I had planned. But, I’m working on ways to offer Inhabitat more value for the limited time I can offer them, so I can hopefully keep bumping the income up while getting that “Transportation Editor” credit on my resume. I’m working on doing more car review features and interviews, plus I’m thinking up other ways I could lend more of my expertise to the blog, rather than running on the treadmill of regurgitating press releases for the morning news feed.

29 Diapers

I was feeling stuck on where to take 29 Diapers for a bit, mostly due to exhaustion. Now I’m planning a new phase of the blog in which I will test homemade natural personal care and cleaning product recipes and not only post them on the blog for my readers but also compile them into a new book. Publishing a new book is just the sort of thing to give me more energy to keep this project going until I know I have exhausted every avenue I want to explore for monetizing my little micro start-up.

The Novel

I wrote 22,000 words in July, woohoo! All it took was shifting 5 hours of work per week from Inhabitat and 29 Diapers to my novel, and I quickly wrote the rough draft to part 3 of my novel. Now I need to polish up the whole thing, adding atmosphere and polishing characterization and plot in part 3 and sprucing up the whole manuscript. Then, I’m off to one Christian fiction writers conference and one mainstream fiction writers conference to meet agents. This WILL happen. Everything else is a hobby compared to my goal of transitioning to literary/spiritual fiction writing as soon as it is workable. And my husband and I have recently defined what workable means in terms of the income I need to bring in. I love boundaries. Thanks, Punkins.

… And Another Project

Okay, so this probably doesn’t sound focused, but I decided to contact a church that has been very formative in my spiritual growth and propose they launch a new online magazine and social media outreach to replace a print magazine they use to publish that I loved and miss since they stopped publishing it two years ago. Turns out they were planning just such a project and may hire me to write some articles and interviews, as well as do some editorial work for them in the future, if the project takes off after launch. I would have to shift some work hours from another project to this, as I literally have no extra time left to give (unless I worked from 2 am-4 am, hmm) but spiritual writing and editing work would fill out my current theme of heading towards work that focuses on eco-friendly living and spirituality. I would love love love it if I could use the green living and spirituality genres of non-fiction to finance my transition into writing fiction about nature and spirituality. How perfect would that be? And just like that, things are coming into focus for the next few years down the road.

Now I Believe The Economic Recovery Is Real, But How High Can It Go?

Here comes the sun. photo, Jon Sullivan

For the last year, economists have been saying the U.S. is now digging itself out of the Great Recession. That’s obvious if you look at stocks (bailout discussions aside), and of course Silicon Valley is enjoying another heyday, but so far it has been a jobless recovery for most of the country. I have tracked right along with this trend, having been laid off from full-time work in 2008 just before the market tanked. Of course I can’t sit still, so I founded 29 Diapers, started writing a novel, and did freelance editorial work where I could find it. Oh yeah, and had a baby. It was a busy recession for me.

But today I saw signs of real recovery.

LinkedIn: hiring.

Oxford Press: hiring.

Time Magazine: hiring.

Wall Street Journal: hiring.

The gutted Conde Nast, of all companies: hiring.

The help wanted signs are back, all over the Interwebs!

And me? Hired. Well, sort of. Right now ideal gainful employment for me means freelance writing and editorial work while I stay home to raise my daughter. Last month I was brought on board Inhabitat as the new Transportation Editor. Huzzah!

But how high can it go? The U.S. has enormous debt problems, has outsourced nearly all manufacturing, and faces stiff global competition for jobs that just aren’t coming back. I think we’re seeing signs of real recovery now, but at some point it will plateau and we will start the conversation about a new reality in America. Do you think we will innovate our way out of this economic mire? Move upstream to a creative economy and leave the information economy to the developing world? I’d love to hear your thoughts in comments.

Passing the Pen to the Next Generation of Writers

I had a tornado dream recently. In it, I sat outside a farm house with a family that was not my own and waited for a storm to approach. I have had tornado dreams before, always warning me of coming turbulence in my life: the last ones warned me of an impending layoff, the first of the dissolution of my church family in a traumatic church split that ripped my family and new in-laws apart days after my wedding. So, suffice it to say that I pay attention to tornado dreams, and I have been chewing on this new one for several weeks. I believe its significance is deep and two-fold, and even extends beyond me to some of you.

The odd things about this dream were that:

1) this was not my family–a first for my tornado dreams that always warn of swift changes coming in my life (i.e. the winds of change)

2) I knew before the dream even began that the older man in the family was going to die, that there was nothing I could do about it, and that my job was to protect the young girl of the family

3) when the tornado came at us, it had four funnels instead of one, which I believe refers to 4 events coming in quick succession to disrupt my life

I woke up with a strong sense that the little girl represented my writing, specifically my novel.

Then I had a second dream, in which I found myself swimming in the Pacific Ocean while toxic waste and industrial trash washed past me in two warm waves. This was one week before the Fukushima tsunami and nuclear meltdown, but I don’t think this deals with anything so literal.

THE DREAMS’ INTERPRETATION

Funnel #1 & Wave #1) I discussed my dreams with a few friends, who both told me they felt the dreams were actually about boundaries. Setting boundaries with a negative person in my life who is jealous of my writing lifestyle so I could focus on my writing, specifically. But that didn’t feel like a complete interpretation.

Funnel #2) Then my mentor passed away, and the dream took on a second meaning: I believe the fact that there was nothing I could do to save the man’s life in my dream meant that I was also to set boundaries on worrying about what happened to Mr. Davis and again to focus on my writing.

Funnel #3) Then I suddenly found myself the new Transportation Editor for Inhabitat, a great job that again challenges me to set healthy boundaries to make sure my writing doesn’t get shelved in all the busyness.

Funnel #4 & Wave #2) I’m still waiting on event number four, which I expect to be represented by the fourth tornado spout and the second toxic wave and relate to setting boundaries with a negative person again, but something occurred to me regarding the second meaning of the dream….

THE DEEPER MEANING

David E. was a professional mentor to me, who gave me a foot in the door in the magazine/online media world and who gave me great advice about how to live a writing life. One sense I had about my dream was that the timing was no accident. I grieved the fact that he couldn’t see my success with Inhabitat because he passed away just a week before I got the job–the day I applied, in fact. In a sense, I believe he passed a baton–shall I say pen–to me to carry on his love of quality writing. He told me I was one of the best fact-checkers and copy editors he had ever known, and I felt that if there was a mantle there to pick up, I wanted to carry on David’s legacy of writing craft and storytelling. It would honor his memory. I don’t think I’m the only one of his employees or friends who could pick up this job and run with it, but I am one of many who have that choice.

I started to wonder if my recent post about the changing of the guard in media was actually occurring as I pondered the subject. I found this article about the best-paid mystery writers in America and discovered that several of them had already passed away. Ditto for sound and media pioneer Sidney Harman, who just passed. In fact, it seems that many giants of the last media age are retiring or passing away. So, beyond the idea of setting boundaries to protect my own writing during this time of swift change, I am also wondering how many mantles are out there to be picked up. Do you want to place your feet solidly in the center of the New York book publishing scene or become a pioneer of new media? I say go for it. I am. Whether you honor someone’s legacy or take back territory for quality writing and integrity in the business world, there are posts standing empty that need to be filled and will be. Which one will you claim as your own?