He spent all last weekend riding it around the neighborhood and city streets. After the first ride on Sunday, he announced that he was ready for me to hop on the bike. So a very nervous jaymi tossed on her 20-year old leather biker jacket, jeans, and kender’s old autocross helmet and fitted herself on the back of the bike for a short loop around the neighborhood. I wasn’t sure about how I’d feel but after a week’s worth of rides, I can say that I’m loving it.


We’ve been riding together for every day this week, with me growing more and more accustomed to the bike, kender’s ride style, and the gear that we’ve purchased for me now. Since various attempts at getting photos to various parental units have failed, I’m using this time to share some of the images of the bike with ya all. Hopefully we’ll have some images of me on the bike in the future.

This is not a bike that we’ll be able to go cross country, or even camping on. Mostly it’s to save gas money for kender’s commute and for us to have some weekend fun with. Who knows, in the future we may upgrade to a touring bike and join the ranks of people who use their motorcycles for camping adventures.

TL;DR version: I’m not sure if what I write below is a system, but I do have a daily order to getting things done. Breathing helps, so does focusing the attention on where the passion lies and then working on one thing at a time.

I don’t deal well with overwhelm. I love having lots of projects going on at once but of course, this means that occasionally they collide and I feel lost and overwhelmed with it all and wish I can do it all, when i know i can’t. Today is one of those days.

My current writing to-do list looks like this:

• Write RS11 posts (about 5 of them)
  
• Continue writing ETT book draft
  
• Write emails to peeps
  
• Work on reviews for W&P
  
• Write potential tarot essay for publications.
  

Earlier, I posted this to my Twitter feed:

Feeling overwhelmed with all the things I gotta write and catch up on. It’s another hunker down and do it day.

Which got this response on Facebook from a friend:

Would love to know how you deal with that. Do you have a ‘system’ or other advice?

To tell you the truth, there is no real cut and dry thing to how I get so much done. I’m not even sure I have a system. I do keep a list of everything I want to do in a day but I don’t really nail it down with priorities. Setting priorities usually backfires on me because while I may set a deadline, my mind will want to work on the bottom thing. So I’ve decided not to do this unless I have a HUGE external deadline looming.

I usually work on a project until I run out of steam, or need feedback, or whatnot. This allows me to rotate through various projects during the day and never allows me to feel bored.

All this said, however, I do have some bits of a system that I do daily that gives me large chunks of time for writing.

First thing every morning, I go exercise. Running is my meditation and it allows me that sacred 30 minutes of having no thoughts fluttering through my mind. My mind is so hyper that there are times when I wish I could turn it off.Lately I’ve been adding 15 minutes of weightlifting and another half hour of stationary bike into the mix.

Once I’m done with the exercise, I stay out and about to complete any errands. This includes library runs, post office runs, groceries, etc. I find that if I don’t get the out of house items done, then these tasks weigh on my mind and nothing “gets done” at home.

Once I am at home, I take some time to check email and then clear out the social media clutter. I’m horrible at replying sometimes, so I do a quick scan to make sure I’ve written a response that needs to be addressed. (I usually try and respond to things in 24 hours or less. If not, it’s because I feel overwhelmed and have no idea what to say.)

Then I look at my writing to-do list and pick one item that can be completed in short time. Usually, this is a blog post or email. Something to get the juices flowing and the achievement meter up. Sometimes, I’ll fire up the industrial music and pick a good hard beat to get the juices going. Having the music pumped in through headphones also helps to focus that energy.

Once quick items are out of the way, I get to the long-term projects. These I work on in small chucks– half hour to an hour. Doing short bursts of energy on these projects gives me the ability to feel like I’ve worked on them, as well as giving my body a break from being at the keyboard for so long. I sometimes forget to breathe, so this regime also allows me the time to breathe and refocus energies to the next item on the list.

I also try not to write past the time my hubby comes home. I want to reserve the time during the evenings for him and me. So far, it’s worked pretty well.

Feel free to post any questions about this… until then, I’m off to work on those Readers Studio posts!

The day the books arrived were always a treat. Unceremoniously wrapped in rubber bands, with my form peering out from the small stack with my name on it. It became a status symbol for kids in my classroom… waiting to see which books arrived and who had the biggest counts. Occasionally, this was not me. I have often wondered if Scholastic was still promoting reading and titles this way and now I have my answers. Thanks for the memories, MikeOfAllPeople and to Scholastic for turning me into a book junkie.

The big news? Well, I learned how to crochet a few months ago. There was a particular thing I wanted to learn how to make so two of my fiber friends muddled through and taught me how to do it. And the amazing thing is that it’s stuck. I’m making thing after thing after thing and actually enjoying it. So, go figure.

A few seconds ago, I was sitting here in the Comfy Chair ™ crocheting a project for a friend and I started thinking about a strange side-effect to crocheting. It’s helping me work things out with my writing in my head.

Spent most of this week working on sorting out thoughts for various reviews and instead of just sitting in front of an open Scrivener screen doing nothing, I pulled out one of my WIP projects and started going at it. That’s when the strange thing happened, I was focused on crocheting rows but my mind was actually rambling off good ideas and sentences. Every now and then I’d pause to jot the ideas down, then I’d go back to working on my row.

I’m a bit surprised at this discovery and look forward to seeing what other insights and effects crocheting has on my other lifetime passions.

It started out with our annual Fourth of July Blow Stuph Up party, which was a huge success. I firedanced, played Rockband and my inner pyro got to come out any blow off mortars. Then we had a weekend visit from our friend Drakino. We took him to the gorge and to St. Helens. I cohosted another class, Divination for the Curious, which was a lot of fun and attended a concert by Ayria and Project Pitchfork.

This weekend kicks off the “even crazier” period of July. We’re going camping this weekend. Then on Tuesday I head out to the Oregon coast to attend a Tarot Intensive hosted by my friend Katrina. I’m very much looking to both camping excursions. I drive home late Friday night only to turn around once more Saturday morning to tour Tillamook with Kender, and his parents. We’ll continue heading south along the coast till we hit Lincoln City where we’ll join my family who’s flying out Friday. Neither of our parents have ever met, so this is going to be a fun and wild ride.

We’ll spend the night, and our anniversary, at the coast and then head back Sunday with my family in tow. For the final days in July, I’ll be showing my family all the changes Portland’s done since their last visit.

I’m taking every little “free moment” to breathe and remember to enjoy this moment. If I didn’t enjoy being busy, then I wouldn’t be doing all this. Of course, I figure I’ll sleep when the end of this month comes. Or in August. *gryn* In any case, wish me lots of energy and fun!

The other one, Twisted Realities, was a fiction zine. I scoured the internets and my college for short (flash) fiction, poemtry, and essays with an edge. I was huge into postmodern fiction and wanted to create an outlet for my voice, and to publish others who had similar ideas about weird writing to mine. Twisted Realities had a two-issue run, mostly because it was hard to scrape up stories from others. But I was fortunate enough to have works by friends, as well as Lance Olsen, in the collections.

After I graduated college, I was asked back to WSU Vancouver to speak about my experiences of putting the zines together at one of my professor’s english classes. The class even used my zines as reading material.

Sanjay just emailed me the below photo of him holding pristine copies of Twisted Realities. Apparently, he thinks they’re worthy keepers and that one day they’ll be worth something. I’m amazed and happy that, in the two limited-run editions of 50 each, someone else, besides me, kept their copy. Thanks for the trip down memory lane S!

Images of my past scroll in my mind as they intertwine with the pictures dancing across the tv screen. Tears flow down my face as I wonder when my prose and the vivid worlds they create will touch the imaginations of others in this way.

In the process, my Twitter plugin died, so I just completed installing WP to Twitter and have tested that. It now works and here’s hoping I don’t have to make any more drastic mods for awhile. I have many other word-related and design projects that need my attention.

Click the Read More button to view the date/time/locations of the two panels I’m on.

Immanion Author Panel: What Next?
Sunday, February 14th @ 1:30 PM in the San Juan/San Carlos rooms
This weekend is dedicated to getting back to the basics. In pagan and magical traditions, the basics are often things that we use as foundations to build the more advanced parts of our practice. Join the attending Immanion Press authors, specialists in intermediate and advanced paganism and magic, as we discuss how to bridge the basics and what’s beyond, how to know what to take and what to leave behind, and how to forge one’s own path, both in the authors’ own traditions and in general.

Women’s Voices in Magic Panel: What’s Important?
Sunday, February 14th @ 7:00 PM in the Santa Clara room
This panel includes the editor and several authors of the Women’s Voices in Magic anthology. We’ll address questions such as what we feel is important to our magical lives, what we believe are good basics of magic topics, and whatever questions the audience has for us.