Eight Days

Blog No. 369

No, I’m not talking about Hanukkah. For those who are celebrating next week, I hope it’s great. For me, the next eight days are my time off. Every year between Christmas and the New Year, my day job is closed. The actual dates fluctuate and since we are a rental facility, there are always a few shifts during that period, but, we are closed for the regular staffed hours. This year, we are closed from the 25th to the 2nd (the 2nd is our de-decorating shift). I have from tomorrow until the 28th before I have to go back. There’s Christmas in there and I’m definitely going to take at least one day to do nothing but play video games with my brother, but the rest of the time is free to work.

Aren’t I talking about not being at work, though? Yes. But I mean real work that I care about. Like writing. My priority right now it to finish the comic (and stuff it with more jokes) then I have to sit down with Christian to finally plan out our yearly events for 2020. It would be a rough plan and I expect plenty of things to come up (especially locally) but having an idea of what we want to do and when makes things easier. I can book time off work and we can contact the organizers to see about possible guest status. I also have two short stories to finish (among the half dozen that have been started). They have specific deadlines, so I can focus on them and ignore the rest.

I’d also like to get back into Broadcast Wasteland. Christian has been going over the second draft for me, but I already have enough from him to get started on the third. There will be at least one major change that will take some elbow grease, and I’d like to start getting it into some beta readers’ hands in the new year. Also, and this is probably no shock to some of you and a little bit of a disappointment to at least one person, but I’m going to hold off on the story I was going to write for the next novella in favour for a new idea that I think will better bridge the gap (and will be less of a tonal shock coming after the first three). The other story needs more development, which I would do in between April and September anyway, but I think this is the right move.

Then there is the novel. I’ll save some of the details for my looking forward at 2020 post for next week, but I have to take a long, hard look at what I’ve done and what I’d like to accomplish with that. It’s not something I’ll be getting into in my time off, though. That’s going to be, mostly, for the comic, the story, and the third draft. That’s still a lot of stuff for just one week (minus two days for the holidays). I had a thought that really scheduling my days in detail may help me stay productive (while leaving me with the proper down time that I desperately need after the last few months at the day job). It’s a bit of an experiment. There is a lot I want to get done in a short amount of time. It’s like a microcosm of my life. Maybe it’s something I can develop in the new year. Either way, the time away from the day job is going to be nice.