Re-setting

I'm tired.

The last fews months have been long on trips to take and retrieve children, support calls at work for things that had to be resolved right now (often because the user waited too long to start the process), and the need to produce more, better-quality data, quicker, while doing other things, too.

In other words, everyday life. Don't get me wrong. There's been nothing major going wrong, it's just been kind of a grind.

It strikes me that the first novel has to be the hardest. Maybe the second or third, or any novel you write while having mommy or daddy duty and a full-time job. And yet, if you look at early novels by people, and the lengths they've gone to get them done, you have to acknowledge the accomplishment.

But what happens when you need a reset, when your focus has drifted, and you need to get back to the basics? Given the rest of life, how singular does your focus have to be? Can you write and market a book while marketing a writers conference and considering whether you need to find another job? Can you do it while acting as care-giving to a loved one and working fulltime? Can you do it while major changes occur in your life?

The answer, of course, is yes. You can do all that if you choose to do it. By focusing on what's important and arranging everything else around the big rocks. (As in, put the big rocks in the jar first and the little rocks will fit around them.) By grinding through the times when energy is low and demands are high until the equation changes. By having faith in the future and your ability.