October and the first half of November were very slow on the work front for me. It’s not something I’ve experienced as a freelancer before – and it makes me realise how very lucky I’ve been with my editing business so far.

 

It was very easy to begin with to just let everything slide because I didn’t have the structure of external deadlines to keep me productive and motivated. But then I decided there were lots of things I wasn’t making any progress on that I’d like to get back to.

 

So, I designed what I called my New Improved Work Ethic Schedule!

 

I split the day into sections and allocated a type of activity to each one – three work or project sessions in the morning, then lunch and a walk, then three work or project sessions in the afternoon. The schedule ran from 9am to 4:30pm and that seemed initially like a perfectly reasonable amount of productive time for a day, especially when I was only planning to do it four days per week.

 

For the first ten days or so, it worked really well! I got tons of stuff done on my novel revisions, I kept up to date with podcast prep and Stanley the Bear’s online content, I resurrected lots of reading I wanted to do about marketing and the craft of writing. And, when paid work started to pick up again, I folded it into the schedule where it was designed to fit.

 

Somehow, though, in the last couple of weeks, everything has completely fallen apart. This is partially because I’ve taken on perhaps more paid work than I should have (due to paranoia about never getting any ever again and a complete inability to say no) – but the schedule should still have room for my own projects, even with the amount of paid work I’m doing.

 

But I haven’t touched my novel revisions in over a week, I’m really struggling to keep up with the online networking course I’m doing, I’m recording Stanley’s videos one at at time only a couple of days before they’re due to be posted, and all my reading plans have gone out the window.

 

This blog post was supposed to be written and released in November… I have tons of updates I need to do to my website, a load of really great tips about descriptive writing I need to go through and record somewhere, I’ve stupidly signed up to a short story competition I have no idea where I’m going to find time or space for, and my inbox is overflowing with emails I really need to deal with.

 

I feel overwhelmed, stressed, very tense and irritable – and as if I’m failing on all fronts!

 

How did this happen? And how can I get back to where I want to be?

 

At the moment, I don’t actually know the answers to those questions. I’m just still trucking along, doing one thing at a time, trying to stick to a plan, and somehow getting derailed every single day…

 

I feel like I’m hanging off the front of a train, frantically putting down the rails as it hurtles along a mountain track – and my novel fell off the caboose into a ravine some miles back… Everything else (that’s not paid work) didn’t even make it onto the train in the first place, I don’t think…

 

I *am* going to take some time off over Christmas and New Year, and I don’t need to pitch for any more work until January, and I’ve got a glorious six-day writing retreat booked early in the New Year. And I know I can get all my paid work obligations completed before Christmas.

 

I’m going to keep putting things on my list, I’m going to keep striving to make progress on the things I really want to spend my time on, I’m going to make sure I keep up with the social media and podcast schedules I’ve set – and I’m going to try to breathe and be kind to myself when things slip out of control.

 

And for now, I think that’s got to be enough.