From post-con coma to con crud

I apologize for not having posted about AnomalyCon yet as I'd promised after the con ended, but I've been down and out with a sore throat and some minor congestion.  It doesn't sound like much, but it's a pretty substantial sore throat, and the entire illness has been making me feel pretty tired.  I actually think I felt it coming on Friday morning, so it probably isn't really "con crud," but a friend of mine used that term and I liked it so much I decided to appropriate it anyway.

It's supposed to be a vacation of sorts for me, and I'm spending the first few days of it sick, which seems somehow familiar -- I think I've been through this before.

Post-con coma

AnomalyCon ended this afternoon.  After a whirlwind weekend of costumes, panels, and other exciting things, I'm usually mentally exhausted afterward, if not physically.  I'm a little less tired than usual, I think partly because I skipped a few things this year instead of trying to do EVERY SINGLE THING, but I'm still pretty beat.  Plus I think I might be getting a cold, so I've taken it easy this evening and I'm now heading to bed with the hopes of getting enough sleep to fight it off.

I will post more on the con tomorrow, including pictures of my outfits, descriptions of my adventures, and an overview of what I learned!

Off to AnomalyCon!

AnomalyCon starts today!  I spent last night packing (I babysat this morning so I knew I wouldn't have another chance until right before I left, and I didn't want to be rushed).  I have costumes planned out, too.  I had been contemplating not dressing up this year, but decided I wanted to after all.  And then I found some great stuff for costumes, so now I'm really excited about dressing up!

Weird week

This week has been weird.  The kid I usually take to preschool in the mornings has been sick, so I've had the last few mornings off.  You would think this would mean I'd get more done, but in actuality I may have gotten less done, and just slept more.  That's not necessarily a bad thing, since I've been getting less sleep since I started that morning job in January, but it has made the week feel surreal.

Also weird is that I have a lot of busyness coming up: AnomalyCon is this weekend, and then Camp NaNoWriMo starts almost immediately afterward.  I feel like I'm not prepared for any of it.

Breaking bad habits

Sometimes when you've fallen into a routine of bad habits, the best thing is to change things up so that it forces you to break out of the routine.

A good example is my workweek and related procrastination.  One of my clients assigns weekly work.  They had been assigning it on Monday and Tuesday, and making it due toward the end of the week.  I was frequently doing the work over the weekend, and from there I started rolling it over into the beginning of the following week.  A clever suggestion from my client might have fixed this problem, though.

Scrivener for bloggers

I have to admit I don't use a separate software for my blog posts -- I write them directly into the blog platform -- but if I had to use something, I would use Scrivener.  This isn't a very detailed post, but it does list some compelling reasons why you should consider using Scrivener for blogging:

 Scrivener is Your All In One Software for the Writer or Blogger

The freelance writer and the art of saying no

I have a hard time saying no, and I suspect I'm not the only writer out there with this problem.  We are stereotyped as being procrastinators and chronically late on deadlines, but often the problem is something else entirely: We find it too difficult to say no, even when we know saying yes is going to overload us.

Over the past year, since I made some changes to my life and started freelancing seriously again, I've come to realize how important it is for me to get better at saying no.  I don't say yes because I'm afraid of saying no; I just fail to be honest with myself about whether I want to say yes.

Daylight Savings Time starts Sunday

Don't forget that Daylight Savings starts this Sunday.  These are the times when I miss being a full-time freelancer, because the time change didn't affect me all that much, since I usually didn't have to get up at a certain time, and certainly didn't have to punch a clock.  Unfortunately since these days I babysit on Sundays, I don't even get the day to adjust that most people do before they have to wake up early on the new time.

Because I have the experience of not having to get up early every morning, and certainly not being sleep deprived, I more or less agree with this article:

Seriously, Stop Worrying About Daylight Saving Time

Cyclical habits

As writers, we all have habits that we wish we were better at fixing, habits that interfere with some aspect of our careers and our lives.

Mine is, lately, getting behind on the week's writing assignments.  It means that I end up playing catch up over the weekend -- or, more dangerously, on Monday -- and as a result, I end up feeling burnt out by the time I'm ready to start on the current week's work.