I’m still not sleeping well. Last night I gave up and got out of bed at 12:21 and came downstairs, made some sleepy tea in the dark, then gave up, turned on the lamp, got out a notebook, planned fiendishly for about an hour, writing down all of the thoughts that had been running through my head while trying to sleep, felt like maybe I might be a little sleepy now and went back upstairs around 1:44 and then did manage to fall quickly into a deep sleep for about 5 hours. Better than the no deep sleep I’ve had for the past few nights but still way less than ideal. Today I am making sure to exercise and then will try a warm bath, some kind of pre-bed meditation and maintain the no screens after 9:30 (full disclosure, I was using my computer last night until about 10:30 which I don’t totally blame for the sleep issue but certainly didn’t help).
I have so much on my mind, and a lot of it I’m excited about and I don’t want to stop thinking about, but I definitely have to find a way to chill out. I am planning to launch a new blog but first I need to figure out how to set it up so that new posts are sent out as emails. I know this is doable and I know there are tons of resources out there to figure this kind of thing out, and I could probably just call my web host and ask them and they could help me or i could pay an unemployed millennial to figure it out for me if i knew where to find one. My main problem, I think, is prioritization. But I’m not totally sure about that because I do feel like priorities are a bit of a dance. You don’t know what is possible tomorrow until you’ve finished with today. Once you take a tiny move forward in one direction other options open up and you don’t know about those until you’ve gotten there. So planning is good, and making lists and saying I’m going to do this and then this to get to this. But I guess I don’t know how to do that and leave room for improvisation or opportunity — or children. And that’s probably the root of it all. Who the heck knows how much time I might or might not have and under what circumstances? I might have a free hour during nap time, or I might not. I might have time tomorrow, or someone might get sick. This is the way my life is set up right now, and I had the choice to set it up differently, but couldn’t or didn’t or chose not to figure that out.
So the things I am wanting to do right now (in addition to being a loving, engaged and patient mother with a reasonable tone to her voice who is genuinely interested in talking incessantly about Moana) (and in addition to being a — let’s go for decent — wife, nice and very occasionally thoughtful, though in my 10-year vision I aspire to more)… Well, let me back up a bit and say that my theme for 2017 is to 1) Reinvent My Source of Income and 2) Ship My Art. And I guess I feel a little desperation about the former. I have to earn money to balance the family budget and I’m self employed. I like some of what I do, though all of what I do is paid well below my “earning potential” or what I was paid in my former life. Some of what I do to earn money feels like fingernails down a chalkboard and I try to be thankful for having the opportunities but I would rather spend twice as long and carry bricks into a pile than do some of the projects. And that’s all I can say. If I’ve worked with you lately just know that I’m surely not talking about your project — that one was great and working with you and/or your team was lovely.
So I have dreams of earning a living in different ways. I love copy editing, and some of my work is copy editing, so I’m happy to keep that stream alive for as long as need be. But otherwise I’d like to be writing: blogs, novels, essays, music. And I’d like to be doing work that contributes to helping people make shifts in their lives — through gameful approaches — towards ‘simpler’, healthier, more connected, more sustainable, more joyful, more creative practices. We need to learn to live differently on the earth — and with each other — and I think there are fun ways to learn about doing that. And funny ways to be open about things that aren’t funny but that we need to talk about.
SO – I know that to Reinvent My Source of Income I have to do some experiments, try some things, ship some art. But I also have to earn money at the same time so I have to find the time to do the current work while desperately wanting to make progress along the lines of my dreams/vision and be a mom/wife/friend/physical being with needs to eat/sleep/digest properly/get sunshine/relax somehow. And I’m afraid — deeply afraid — that if i can’t figure this out I’m going to be trapped getting a job like the jobs I had from 21-40. I don’t want to sit in meetings and write reports and travel to conferences — about ANYTHING, saving butterflies, restoring a watershed, feeding every child in America. I want those things to happen but I want to work in a different way and spend my time in different kinds of efforts.
I think it can happen, but not without supreme effort and I waver in feeling like that effort is possible. I thought about writing a novel, somewhat like The Awakening, but instead of walking into the ocean our heroine just decides to take a job so she can redecorate her house (and that was the end of her…)
So right now I’m working on:
- novel – shelved, not working on this
- snakes essay – complete draft finished, need to edit, send to friends/reviewers for comments, then ship the art. It is pretty much ready and I’m either afraid or I just haven’t had 2 hours where this has been my priority.
- finish song. I am writing a song that I love. I so much want to share it with folks but it is not yet ready. It is so so close. I have 3 hours with no children tomorrow and I am so hopeful that I will get it to 98%. I am not sure how I am going to share it because… well, you will see. More art almost ready to ship.
- when that song is finished i need to work on the next one.
- the new blog – figuring out the email part (which i will do within this blog first) and then building the site and some initial content for the new blog. i would like to be ready to launch no later than june. I have an idea that i think will be really fun and it would work best to start in june, but that’s not that long away. maybe i should pay someone to help me with the website but that also requires some research and of course money!
- another top secret new project that occurred to me last night that will go along with the new blog. It is a sort of 21 day ‘bootcamp’ or challenge that i’m going to do and hopefully a few others will join me in trying. More about that soon.
- this blog – the 25 day lucky penny challenge. I will say the challenge is working in that I have not played the iPad game since finding the quarter. If nothing else, this is a huge shift in a positive direction, though i do wonder about the lack of sleep and the lack of the game. The game relaxed me and was mindless and i probably needed some of that. But i can play the piano or guitar and get the same result, I just can’t do that when the kids are sleeping and I can learn how to teach them how to give me a few minutes to do it when they are awake.
Huge post today, with no direction but sharing what is going on. Maybe tomorrow I will be able to report progress on one of the above. We have managed to refinance our mortgage, get through 5 weeks of Dave’s travel, submit an application for Sam to go to school next year (late in the game – just looking into options), put together a melted wax collage made by 12 4-year-olds for a school auction, take both kids to the dentist, start a new health regimen (based on strong advice from a doc), complete our tax return, have two child birthdays and Easter, brainstorm a 10-year vision and eat mostly sugar, gluten and dairy free — oh, and become a Beauty Counter consultant, of course. Will need to explore/explain that choice in a future post.
The children are stirring…
With love,
Jennifer