Abandoned no more. Sorely neglected, but conscientiously so.

Every Spring I teach Spreadsheets and Databases to college freshmen. A few days ago I gave my students their final exam and turned in final grades. I have also been sick for the past three weeks, which has made the end of the school year much more difficult than usual.

I made a conscious decision to let the blog go for a while. Teaching was a commitment that took precedence over writing, at least temporarily. I’m still deciding when/whether to give up the teaching gig to concentrate on my writing career. The phrase “don’t quit your dayjob” echoes in my ears.

I was about to call this post “I need to stop moving my own cheese….” then I realized that I already have a blog post, from August 22, 2012, titled “Who Moved My Cheese?” Yes, in that post, I also talked about being sick, that time with a perforated ear drum and Bronchitis. This time it’s an Upper Respiratory Infection, and on my doctor’s recommendation, I’m recovering without antibiotics. It’s not pretty.

In addition to neglecting the blog, I also let go of my daily writing habit. It hurts, but it was necessary. I followed through with a couple of deadlines, and I was able to temporarily postpone an editing commitment (an anthology where all the authors are editing for each other) as well as an interview (I’m being interviewed about writers and mental illness.)

Now, about that cheese…

A year and a half ago I confessed to abandoning The Kingdom Come Stories in favor of the Pangalactic Sojourners. A few months ago, I did the opposite. Essentially, I moved my own cheese. But I did so for good reasons… PG was stalled and needed something I couldn’t yet grasp. I took advice from Tiffany Reisz and chose one story that I thought would be a good first novel,  then prepared to polish and query it. (Let’s not get into the self-pub’ing debate here. Tis not for me.) That story was my 2013 NaNoWriMo project, and I’m quite proud of it. It is necessary for me to let go of a rough draft after it’s finished so I can read through it and make a round of edits before handing it to Beta readers. This is hard for me to do, but I turned my attention to another Kingdom Come story (Under the Radar) and then my attention turned to my teaching commitment.

We’re several weeks into this round of #ROW80, and now that the semester is over I can re-establish my writing goals. However, I am still sick and light-headed, so I’m not going to dive in too deeply yet. I did do Friday Flash today, but I have yet to look at my new editorial commitments. I have two short stories accepted for anothos that are in the editing stages, so those deadlines take precedence. I need to stay true to Tiffany’s advice and give most of my attention to edits of Jublilation of the Southern Cross and Hearthsong.

And I need to get healthy. Because none of this is going to happen if I’m still coughing so hard I can’t think.