Winter Hibernation

*blows dust off the blog*

So, the monthly blogging fell by the wayside. Life happens. Teaching is tiring. It can also be a wonderful experience filled with lots of good moments but for me, it is draining to the point of exhaustion. I’ve always known this but never really understood why. My other half pointed out something that I’ve known, but never truly thought through to the logical ending. I’m partially deaf. Always have been. Since birth (though not picked up until kindergarten where it was thought I may be a) have an attitude problem or b) be deaf. No doctor has ever worked out why. The best I managed to find was an explanation when working at the university and talking to a PhD student developing hearing aid technology. His explanation gave me an understanding of why when I’m tired you could be speaking Icelandic to me and I’d understand you just as well as if you were speaking English. How does this tie into teaching? Well, teachers need to listen. As in hearing listen not that “Active Listening” stuff you are taught to do to show understanding and getting along better with fellow humanity. So, teaching for six hours a day = six hours of concerted effort in the act of listening. No wonder I am exhausted on those days to the point of wanting to sleep about half-an-hour after I’m home.

It also meant, the longer the teaching went on, the more exhausted I became. Which meant life moved to prioritising Must Do/Essential Life Stuff. I wish I could say I kept writing a lot. Over the duration of the contract I managed around 5,000 words. Sounds like a lot until the context of 5,000 would be about ten days worth of work usually.

I’m still recovering. I knew July was going to be “downtime” month when I agreed to the gig (which by the way didn’t end until the end of June). I need to rebuild my energy up for “conference season”. 

In three weeks time I’ll be at the annual RWA Australia conference. Really looking forward to it. Love meeting and talking writing. Dressing up – both in costume and for the gala night. Good times. Then a fortnight after that I’m dropping into Aussiecon4, the annual science fiction world convention. The original plan was for myself, the other half and the teen to all attend the entire con. However, it is not a good time in the school calendar (especially for a teenager reaching the pointy end of schooling & doing subjects at advanced speed).So, instead, the other half is going for the entire duration, the teen is staying home and I’ll go down on the Friday evening (once The Teen is at his father’s) and come home Sunday night.

As I said at the beginning, Life Happens.

Time Vortex

I seem to have fallen into one this year. So much for the year being quiet. I really should know better by now. I did have a quite relevant reason for missing March online. During the mad preparations that was the Emerald deadline my laptop died. Died as in replacing the hard drive. Luckily for me, the m/s was in email land waiting for my reader/edit . One thing it did teach me, I must really want to pursue this writing thing. I could’ve quit. I could have in the tears and swearing, sometimes simultaneously quit. Stopped. Walked away. I didn’t.

The computer going kaplooey did throw a spanner in the works of my life. It didn’t help the computer was physically away for some time and when it did come home it wasn’t right. It still isn’t completely there but at least now I’m not so gun-shy of coming back online. My Google reader was approaching scary proportions with many still to be caught up on.
I’ve been amazed at how online many lives have become. Not just for writing but also socially and professionally. I had HR, pay office and all manner of things caught in emails I could not access (until recovery had occurred).


This brings me to the other reason for my absence online, or rather, my minimalist approach to online time. I have taken on an extra contract. I have no idea why given my plan this year was to write two books and get much more serious about sending the stories out into the world (I’ve whittled it down to one book to be written now). Life happens. So I’m now back in an adult classroom as well as my usual factory playground for work.


Making me organised is the way I’m seeing it. I’ll be this way until the end of June (or until the teacher I’m replacing returns, which I’m guessing will be early). Just in time for my event planning to take place.


So April is past the half way point. Least living in Australia I don’t have to worry about my taxes (that would be September for me) but juggling work x 2, engagement/birthday event planning, family and oh yeah, writing is keeping me out of any kind of mischief.


Til next month. Ciao.