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The week we moved into our house was not what I would call a good week. 

The process of house hunting and home buying was immensely stressful.  The moving process was almost worse, with the cleaning and the moving coinciding with a major shipping event I bore partial responsibility for.  This came on the heels of the stressful novel submission/rejection/negotiation/sale(!) process.  That came on the heels of the stressful revision, which came on the heels of the stressful agent switch, which was immediately preceded by Drew graduating and working full time and us counting down the months of money left, which was of course triggered by me graduating and losing my day job and trying to transition into full-time writing and business managering when that looked like the craziest thing in the world to do.  That, of course, all came on the heels of that insane first year of marriage in which I revised and defended my thesis, we started a business (and figured out how to do all the million things that go along with it), made nearly no money, and adjusted to being married to each other.  (That last being, by FAR, the easiest of the lot.) 

You still with me?  Okay.

As grateful as I am for my life, that first week in our house, I found myself for the first time in three years grasping for energy to face the tasks before me, and coming up empty.

I consider myself a tough-as-nails, suck-it-up, get-it-done kind of a girl.  But it turns out even I can run out of fuel.

It was the shelves that did it, of all things.  As much as I like the look of our sleek, black Walmart shelves, they are not the sturdiest of things, and I don’t think our floor is entirely flat either.  They leaned six inches into the room even with the bottom back flat against the wall.  They loomed there, waiting to fall.

In the last few years I have done many things that I did not know how to do.  I have googled; I have implemented trial and error.  I have asked friends; I have called strangers.  I have puzzled; I have searched.  But that day, that week, I reached for the go-to girl in me, and she flipped me the finger and walked away.

I had nothing left.

We got through it, of course.  Drew helped me figure out what a stud finder was.  Four trips to the hardware store later we’d screwed the damn bookshelves to the wall.  They look lovely now. 

(They looked less lovely the night we tried to buy screws at Wal-mart and the power went out and they kicked us out of the store, sans purchase.  That was the day the wasp stung me and caused me to drop and break my brand new porch light, and the woman from the gas company spent five minutes trying to talk me out of paying for someone to just show-me-where-my-freaking-pilot-light-is-before-I -die-from-lack-of-hot-water-no-I-can’t-handle-dealing-with-it-myself-this-week-thank-you-very-much.  That’s the kind of week it was.)

Point is, we fixed it.

But I cannot forget that empty feeling. 

I don’t feel empty now.  I’ve gotten through the last few weeks, and with them, the last of the transition tasks.  Gencon has arrived and Drew finished the projects he has worked so hard all year to complete.  From what I hear, the convention is going better than either of us hoped.  

For the last three months, this has been our mantra: we just have to get through Gencon.  We could suck it up and go head down in the work for that long.  We could do it.

And we did.  I’m glad we did.  Our lives are so full of awesome.  And much of that awesome is directly due to our willingness to hold on tight and let our lives spin us around and around over the last couple of years.  I am so, so glad we did.  We’ve been wildly successful and ridiculously happy.  More of either than we deserved to be, that’s for sure.

But my body is sending me a very strong message–the one it sent most strongly that day when I stared in despair at my bookshelves.  This whirlwind transition does nothing for us if we just keep spinning forever.  Spinning forever isn’t the goal.  It pulls more energy than it gives and leaves us with less.  We need to refuel, to refill.  What we need most is to settle down.  Be still.  Write books.  Paint minis.  Work with clients.  Make dinner.  Clean the house.  Play video games.  Roleplay.  Sew projects.  Have dinner with friends.  Go camping.  Smile.  Laugh.  Be.

Three more days and Gencon is over.  Drew is home.

For both of our health, I need to keep that promise I made to myself.  I have to teach myself a new way to be–a stable way.  A sustainable way.   Because I don’t want to come up empty again.  And we have a few more big steps before all the pieces of our plan are complete, and I can’t possibly manage those steps if I’m not coming to it from a place of stability.

It’s one more thing I don’t know how to do.  But somehow I feel it’s the better part–and the most worthwhile to learn.

Yesterday I ran out of transition tasks.  After the massively terrifying home buying and moving tasks, coupled with looming work deadlines for both of us, we are done.  (Well, Drew has two more weeks until he’s totally done.  But I’m there.)  So I spent today napping, staring into space, and falling back into routine. 

It’s not that my list of Things To Do is gone.  But the Things that are left To Do are all routine-like things.  I need to weed the strawberries.  (This whole having a yard thing is a little surreal.  Also, I didn’t know they came with wasps.  Don’t mind the yard work; could live without the bugs.)  I need to finish my draft, but let’s face it: need-to-finish-draft is pretty much a terminal condition for me.  I’ve given up looking for the cure.

I’d like to say this means I’m going to be around here more.  And maybe it will.  But I finally get to move that terminal condition of mine back up to priority number one, so I’m not making any promises.  These last three years have been one huge transition after another.  I’m ready to settle in and just work to keep what I have, instead of changing priorities every few months.  Time to come to a place of stable.  I really love my life, and I’m ready to spend some time living it.

I have now packed everything that I can possibly pack and still live in our house for the next week and a half.

I still don’t know when we’ll be moving, for absolutely sure.

Drew’s painting is coming along.  Five more weeks of madness, and then it all has to be done, one way or another.

My rewrite.  Oy.  Don’t ask about my rewrite.

I still don’t know if I’m going to Gencon.  This largely depends on the costs involved in the move.

I got fed up with my insanely scheduled calendar yesterday, mostly because half the things on it are contingent on other things, so I don’t know what day they go on.  So I wrote myself a triggered to do list.  When A happens, do B, C, and D.  When E happens, do F, G, and H.  This makes me feel less like I’m going to forget something, and more like I can handle it.

I wish A would just freaking happen already.  I am tired of making contingency plans.

I generally consider myself a responsible person.  I pay my taxes.  I keep track of my finances.  I stick to a budget.  I generally fulfill my commitments.  I examine the consequences of my attitudes and actions.  When I say I’m going to do something, I am reasonably confident that I am responsible enough to actually follow through.

But sometimes the IDEA of all that responsibility circles around and scares me to death.

Just a few years ago my only responsibility was to financially support myself.  There were also responsibilities of religious significance, including serving in volunteer positions at church, and in a less formal way, being a decent human being and take care of other people (which is a privilege, really, but also a responsibility). 

Sometimes it feels like progressing in life always means taking on new responsibility.

Now I am responsible to my husband, to fulfill the promises I made to him when I married him.
I’m responsible for making sure our bills are paid on time and in full and with money we currently have in the bank.  (And there are more of them.  Like health insurance.)
Owning a business means I am responsible to practice accurate financial reporting and fulfill our financial obligations to the government.  (That one is especially important to me, as I have many friends who have at one time or another needed government assistance–hell, I went to school on a federal loan–so I feel it an acute responsibility, even a privilege, to make sure I’m paying my contribution to make those things possible.)
Owning the painting studio also means we have responsibility to make sure our customers’ orders are filled accurately and on time and in a way that makes them happy to be doing business with us.
I have some limited contractual responsibility with other people’s intellectual properties.

I handle all those things just fine, miraculously.  I am flakier than I’d like to be in my personal life (because of my desire to see everybody, I sometimes overbook on fun things and attendance becomes sporadic) but generally I think it works out okay.  

So I have no reason to believe that I won’t be able to handle writing under contract, or making house payments.  These responsibilities are really just variations of things I’m already doing.  Logically, I know it’ll be fine.

But there’s this tiny part of me saying: more responsibility?  Really?  Do I have to?

Yes, fearful part of Janci, you have to.  In no small part because the rest of you actually wants to.

Welcome to your life.  It’s a good one.  I promise.

People ask me:

When is your book coming out?
When are you signing your contract?
When are you moving? 
When are you closing on your house?

Here’s the only answer I have:
When other people tell me it’s time.

There, now you know everything I know.   Isn’t it fun to be in the dark?   🙂

 

So this week I finally got my rewrite past chapter two and the first half of chapter three.  It took me forever to get those chapters written.  I had to scrap and rewrite large parts of them several times over the last month or so.

Then yesterday I realized that the scenes at the end of chapter two and beginning of chapter three would be much better if I scrapped them both (again) and combined them.

So I rewrote them again, half as long.  

This isn’t a rewrite.  It’s a write-over-and-over-and-over.

*sigh*

I think that second chapter can now be stamped *revisable* and left in the dust.  Now to write a new beginning to chapter three…

I’ve made myself a promise.

After Gen Con, there will be no more Big Commitments, Big Goals, or Big Changes in our lives for a good while.

We haven’t had six months without a Big Event (or four) since we started dating. 

And I am so totally exhausted.

Everything we have accomplished has been important and good, but if I keep running hot like this I’m going to burn out.

So starting in the fall, we’re staying home.  I’m going to write books.  (And hopefully, you know, sell them.)  Drew is going to paint things he gets paid to paint and whatever else he feels like painting.  (And no more 70 hour work weeks, thank you very much.)

Between now and then we have to finish off all the things we’ve already committed to, like a rewrite, Schlock minis, competition minis, a major shipping event, a convention, and a move. 

After that: six months.  Please, let me be able to pull off six months without a big event.

Because all this amazing stuff that’s happening doesn’t mean a thing if I can’t take a breath and enjoy it.

My life continues to hurtle forward at unstoppable speed:

We are under contract for a house.

You didn’t know we were looking, you say?

Yeah. 

Neither did we.

So, my life is freaking awesome.  I’m never quite sure how to deal with that, because thinking my life is awesome is rather new to me.

Sometimes I think I come across as too negative on the internet.  But that’s mostly because I think I sound like such a brat if I say, hey, my life is awesome.  

It’s not that I don’t have problems.  I do.  But I also co-own a successful business in an improbable and crazy awesome industry.  (First thing people say when I tell them what Drew’s job is: you can make a living doing that?  Yes, apparently you can.  It’s a surprise to us, too.)  I also get to write books.  (The selling of said books is a nice perk, but my life was awesome before that.  It does, however, mean I don’t have to quit, something I was dangerously close to doing.)  I have a great husband, who works hard and plays hard right along with me.  I also have a collection of awesome friends.  Sometimes I am amazed at how very awesome my friends are.  I love you all. 

We’ve also got big things in the works that, while terrifying, are going to be good.

See?  See how bratty I sound?  I’m so unused to all of this awesome that I don’t know how to talk about it appropriately.  This is all new territory for me.

I think I’m going to go back to complaining now.

The last few years for me have been like a roller coaster.  I don’t mean that things were up and down.  Not at all.  In fact, I spent a year and a half doing the equivalent of waiting in a very long line.

Nothing was moving.  No matter what I did, I saw no forward motion.  I got up every day, went through the motions, and wished for the day when I could just pick new goals that might *someday* move.  Somewhere.  Anywhere.  I felt I would never arrive at the front of that line.

And then, about two months or so ago, I got to the front.  I climbed into the seat.  I buckled in.

And now my life is catapulting forward at such speed, with such gut-churning momentum, that. I. just. want. it. to. stop.  STOP!

Why did I think waiting in this line was a good idea, anyway?