I think
I'm back.
I haven't been an active noder lately. Too much to do, because whenever I wasn't doing something I had to do, there was something I should have been doing that was more important than reading other people's nodes, voting on them, and contributing my own.
Lots of goals have been floating around my "to-do" list for years. Some of those goals are E2-related, like noding a few things that are on my list and perhaps adding to my barely-begun Animorphs node. I really want to. I really intend to. But a lot of these things were just not realistic goals because they a) didn't make money; b) didn't make anyone specific except for ME happy; and c) didn't contribute to any of the larger goals of my life.
The largest goal of my life, some of you may know, is to be a published writer. Maybe I will be well-loved, maybe I will be popular, maybe I will even be the next J.K. Rowling. But before those things happen, I have to be published. So that's first.
So I've been basically absent not because I didn't care, not because I stopped being interested, not because I ran out of things to node, but because . . . well, because I couldn't justify it to myself that I was noding and spending anywhere from 45 minutes to 2 hours on E2 each day when my in-progress fiction writing sat untouched and my completed fiction writing sat unedited and my edited fiction writing sat unqueried.
My bookstore job sucked up a lot of my energy, and social events with my friends took a lot of the rest. (Many of these friends felt slighted or personally insulted when and if I couldn't make time for them, and while each of them individually had a point when they said "I can't believe you can't find time to hang out just a couple hours once a week," I have more than seven friends, and if I allotted a few hours to each friend every week, I wouldn't be able to go to work or do ANYTHING else.)
My e-mail box always contained over 50 messages, most of which were over 3 weeks old. My editing clients sometimes had to wait quite a while for my reports unless it was for very short pieces, even if they were paying me. And the people I used to help out with free editing because they were my friends . . . yup, completely dumped. I just didn't have time. Spread too thin.
I went on the uberman's sleep schedule to make more time. More time was made--I was quite successful (and today I still operate on a modified version of it). But there was still too much on my plate and too many people expecting me to eat.
Against my better judgment I started an online comic, and updated it once a week. That more or less un-made whatever time the uberman schedule made for me. When I had time, I cleaned my apartment or attempted to answer someone's e-mail or--surprise!--did a creative project of some kind. But more often than not, the extra time was taken by an upcoming holiday preparation, or by having to put a lot of time and effort into a friend's birthday gift or something. By this point I pretty much always felt unsatisfied, just so much to do and nothing ever getting done, always the "most important" things getting attention while certain things that were pounding at my soul's door to be done for years never got a second glance.
When you're as attached to your fiction characters as I am, it hurts to tell them to shut up.
But because they're "not real" and not actually getting offended somewhere because you don't have time for a dinner date this week, they got the brunt of it.
I coughed out a couple short stories but I haven't done any serious fiction writing since 2004.
So how am I back?
I dumped my bookstore job. I moved to a new city. I got a better apartment. And . . . I got a job that pays twice as much.
WITH INTERNET ACCESS.
AND LOTS OF DOWN TIME.
Now that I'm getting over the retail mentality of "you should be productive every minute or else you should go home," I'm realizing that I work for a company that can afford to pay me to sit in a seat in case the phone rings, and I'm getting used to it.
I'm answer my e-mail at work, doing some of my editing (heh, the same hours are making money twice!), dealing with the usual 'Net junk that I didn't have time for before.
That includes E2.
I intend to play e-mail catch-up, do E2 romping, and deal with editing in between my work duties, assuming they stay as light as they are. (I was told by my trainer that I would indeed have a lot of down time.)
And best of all I submitted some queries and have had three positive responses from literary agents. Two ended in rejections. One is still being considered, though. And if this ends in rejection--like most do--there's still a whole world out there.
I'm liking this.
I like being back.