Do you ever wonder if at some point along the line you’ve blown a mental fuse? Slipped a cog? Dropped off the trolley cable?
Lately, “competence” does not seem to be my middle name. I never functioned at the level of one of those astonishing admins who keeps a department together and running with Scotch tape and paper clips. But as I recall, I wasn’t a total fool.
And also lately — much more to the point — it seems to me that I’m not getting things done at the rate I used to. It’s more like I can’t get them done in the time I’m accustomed to expecting. And one interruption — just one, dammit — will throw a whole day off, insuring that absolutely positively nothing gets done.
Today the schedule looked like this:
• Collect last six Fire-Rider stories and lay them out for Kindle publication
• Obtain ISBN for the same
• Convert to Mobi format; proofread; fix; reconvert
• Post to Amazon
• Lay out first FR collection for print production at new PoD guy’s site
• Check to see if diet/cookbook proofs are ready; drive to south Phoenix, proof, approve (I hope) and order books for sale
• Walk dogs
• Try again to buy ads on SBTB
• Search for similar website for speculative fiction or sagas
• Work on establishing presence on Goodreads
But instead, here’s how it’s gone:
• Write, by email, a detailed explanation for ad manager of why I dislike and distrust Faceboook and what leads me to believe, despite her assurances to the contrary, that some risk exists for posts to any page established in my FB account to be distributed to my “friends” on the page that has nothing to do with racy books; explain why Racy Books writers and I established a “secret” page to avoid that happening
• Make a decision about what to do next in the ad campaign, if anything, now that FB has screwed us. Explain in detail to ad manager
• Write a post on the Facebook page for The Copyeditor’s Desk, which I had forgotten
• Correspond with reader who wants to buy a copy of 30 Pounds/4 months
• Correspond with accountant and with Web guru over whether Web guru needs to get a 1099
• Pick up mess before cleaning lady gets here
• File loose paperwork
• Get email from client summoning me to meet with him to kill another afternoon going over every one of my edits, and to discuss cost of P&S Press producing his book in hard copy…AT 2 P.M. TODAY
• Prepare a two-page estimate of costs, broken down by task and comparing our estimate with the going rates posted at various sites on Google
• Throw on my clothes
• Paint my face
• Set and comb my hair
• Bolt down a few bites of cold roast chicken
• Fly out the door
Nothing else is going to get done today.
Couldn’t agree more. I just don’t get as much done as I used to.