My day job has been going through an awkward growing phase. Our department is merging with another department; and in a bid for more efficiency, they're streamlining jobs. Don't worry. No one is losing a job. It's that in the other department, people who had been doing three different things now gets to lob it off onto my department. Specifically me and my co-worker. That's fine. Whatever.

Meanwhile for the last nine months or so, I've been a part of a staff council, and we meet for about an hour or an hour and a half every other week. It's a good thing we're doing on the council, but the time requirements do take away from what I need to be doing at my desk. And my co-worker's, because I said she should sign up for the council too. I'm not a meeting person--and because the Universe knows this, there have been about three other groups I'm required to go to meetings now. I usually have one or two hour-long meetings a week now, when in the old days I had the luxury of zero meetings.

Good times.

Never mind this is the time of year when 2/3 of the applications I need to process come through the door and every other email is "You've had my application for MONTHS. When will I get a decision?" It's honestly all I can do not to start setting things on fire. My co-worker is dealing with the same type of headaches, plus doing a lion's share of the committee work. We're both going through burnout, each competing for the window to jump out of so we don't have to return to work tomorrow.

Then you've got the Spring that won't make up its mind to arrive, overcast days that remind you of Seattle, and a cold wind that says Winter isn't leaving ever. (Don't you hate it when houseguests refuse to leave?) We're wore out. We spend 10 p.m. Sunday nights looking forward to FRIDAY when we have another 2 day weekend and we haven't even arrived at Monday yet.

So I did something odd--with the blessing of my co-worker--I took a day off. Friday. Because weekends should really be comprised of three days at the minimum. Now the key to having an extra day to recover from burnout is NOT to sleep the whole time. And I'm a notorious sleeper. Instead I got up on Friday with plans...my plans, happy plans. To do things I'm normally too exhausted on my weekends to normally do.

I did dishes. I decluttered. I wrote some pages. I took a nap. I went to the store and acquired items to complete a Spring project I've half started. I made soup--good soup! I kept mostly off the computer and did not watch TV most of the day. I finished reading a book.

It. Was. Heavenly.

I woke up Saturday later but still boggled THIS was Saturday. I dawdled more, as in keeping with my typical Saturdays, but by mid-afternoon, I worked on the Spring project. I put my hands in the dirt; I was outside in the warm breeze and the Spring sun. I pulled weeds and dug up a little plot to turn into my Little Garden. I filled the area with heavy, black dirt; then I planted two of the goofiest tiniest sticks that are supposed to be lilac bushes into a pot. My muscles were already screaming at me, but damnit, this feels good. This is creative and productive and healthy. Now if my little garden will produce at least one thing I can eat this Spring/Summer, this will be a success.

Then again, it's already a success. I feel good. I feel hopeful. I'm looking forward to Monday instead of Friday. I'm already planning my next Burnout Day--next Friday, where I'll venture out to meet with a cousin and do all sorts of cousin things.

Do you suffer from burnout? What do you do to counter it? What do you wish you could do? How do you keep balance in your everyday life?

The past few days I've seen multiple posts with quotes from Margaret Thatcher but the one above is the one that really stuck out and spoke to me. Combine that with Terri's post from Monday, and it's what's been on my mind, ta-da blog post!

Terri's reminder to us that a writer's process can change very much when you cross that oh-so-hard hurdle of becoming a gasp! published author had me commenting that I don't currently think to much about how much my output will need to increase. That's mostly because for the most part I've been losing the battle to write lately.

It's a battle I've lost and won many times over the past few years. My victories have been small ones though. Limited. Fleeting. Eventually I surrender and let the craziness of my life fly its flag victorious.

There are months I take back my lunches and write a good 500-1000 words a day. And there are months, nay, multiple months in a row where I'm lucky if 100 words get added.

But I continue to battle on. I will never give up until the winning days outweigh the losing ones. That will be when the shift for me from writing without thinking about the future to writing with the future in mind will happen.

Because The Iron Lady is right. Not every war is won or lost in a single battle. In fact, everyday that a writer puts words on paper is a day you won the battle. To find the time, inspiration and sanity(!) to get your story down is a victory. Each and everyday.

Does your battle tally show more wins than losses? What helps you win that battle from day-to-day and week-to-week? Do you approach getting words on the page as a battle or have you won the war and its now become conquered territory? Are you like me and have multiple battles going on in your life at the same time?

This is Llullu the llama - a character from a book I'm posting this month.  It's funny (at least I hope so) sci-fi and is called; DR. AWKWARD: The Adventures of Bob Palindrome in Space.  It's a serial novel and I'm just waiting on the cover.

So, Llullu is a miniature llama.  In the future, there are no dogs, so Bob Palindrome has a miniature llama - about two feet tall.  I found this realistic llama online and bought it. Then I spent the weekend gluing eyelashes on her because she didn't look feminine enough.

Yes, I'm still working on getting the Bombay book up - this is something different.

I did a little photo shoot of Llullu in my office.  To simulate space, I used this weird scrapbooking paper.  It came out like this:


Here's another scene - one of my favorites featuring Llullu:









So that's Llullu the llama.  The first serial comes out in April, the next installment, TACO CAT should be out in June. 

I think Llullu would make a nice addition to our pirate crew.

The Assassin

I tend to go in spurts with my reading and gorge myself on one particular type of book. For all the years of my adolescence it was inspirational romance, then I found thrillers, then contemps, then Regencies, Westerns . . . you get the idea.

Right now, I'm on a Regency kick. I find myself wandering the paperback aisle of the library looking for anything with a flowing gown on the cover. I inadvertently mention common Regency tropes at inappropriate places like staff meetings.

And I'm also running out of authors. I'm picky about who I read, and so I usually stick to authors I know and love. Terrible way to read, I know. But I'm trying to branch out, and so I grabbed every Regency in the library that looked even remotely interesting and took them home.

Lynsay Sands' THE HUSBAND HUNT is one of the books I found, and the best of the bunch. It's the third in a series about the three Madison sisters, orphaned just before their coming out. By this book, the two older sisters have found love, and the youngest sister, Lisa, is 21 and looking to get married before she's officially on the shelf.
She has the man in mind--Robert, a young aristocrat from the neighboring estate--and when she realizes he has no interest in her whatsoever, sets out to enjoy the season and see who else she can find to marry.

But someone has decided to forego courtship and abscond with Lisa to Gretna Green. To protect her, Robert is forced to stay at her side while she flirts with every other bachelor in London.

I liked the heroine -- Lisa Madison -- in this story. And that surprised me. Lisa isn't the most, ahem, savvy of heroines. She manages to stumble into trouble with virgin-cheerleader-in an-axe-murderer-movie regularity. I believe she's kidnapped three separate times in the few weeks spanned in the book. She manages to botch her own ruination -- which she planned!

But in spite of all this, Lisa Madison is a cheery and fun heroine, whose exploits are at once practical and inept. Ms. Sands was able to use humor to her advantage, and turn what could have been a too-stupid-to-live character into a sweet and funny girl I wanted to spend the afternoon with and accompany on an adventure.

Ms. Sands is most prolific in paranomrals, vampires to be specific, and has only a few Regencies. I haven't tried one of her paranormals (see first paragraph), but if they're anything like this one, they'll be funny and well-written.

There were other flaws in this book -- the historical points weren't perfect, the language too modern. But the voice was strong and the writing snappy, and the heroine and humor were more than enough to carry me through.

Anyone read anything by Lynsay Sands? Know other books where good writing and great humor made up for an otherwise flawed story? Know any other authors who switch between Regencies and vampires?