Storytime with Rachel F Hundred

Sometimes you just need to leave balls on the floor

The problem is that there are too many things I want to do.  There are just so many ideas, so many projects…where do I focus my time and energy?  How do I juggle everything?

It’s always been the key area for improvement in my feedback. I’m great at getting lots done at work (even if it meant staying long hours to accomplish this), but juggling across work, life and play? That I always struggle with, and I realised a few months ago that nothing has changed with that in working for myself.

The fact is that too many things to do means prioritisation has to happen, otherwise everything gets done badly, if at all.  Yet prioritisation by its very nature means that the things at the bottom of the list do not get time or attention; those balls get set aside – at least for right now.

One of my promises to myself is that I keep my home feeling warm, comfortable and welcoming.  I live here, I work here, and I spend the vast amount of my time here.  I do not want to spend time somewhere which is dirty or untidy – it’s distracting and means my focus isn’t on more important things.  So, a priority every week is a weekly clean of the house.  Bathrooms are wiped down, kitchen is scrubbed above and beyond the daily clean-up, furniture is dusted, linen is changed, laundry is tackled, and floors are mopped and vacuumed.  It always gives me a moment of satisfaction to see the house clean even if I really do not enjoy the process of getting there.

I’ve also been promising myself to do a deep clean of each room.  Deep cleaning being that next level of cleaning where everything gets a thorough scrub from the light fixtures down to the skirting boards, from the windows to the hard-to-reach places, carpets are cleaned, curtains are dry-cleaned…you get the picture.  Back in July I even managed to deep clean two of the bathrooms and the kitchen pantry. I felt very accomplished.  I was on a roll!  I was on track and soon the whole house would be deep cleaned!

Alas, no.

Since then, I’ve managed to declutter my study in August, only to immediately re-clutter it in September. And I’ve managed to declutter one kitchen drawer. One. I console myself with the thought that I did do a thorough clean in the spare rooms during September when I had visitors, but the clutter was pushed into cupboards and drawers rather than being sorted out, and I wouldn’t call it a deep clean, but rather an enhanced typical one.

What has this got to do with writing?  Well, my deep cleaning has been sacrificed to the need to focus on my writing and my work, (which are becoming more and more aligned).

Cleaning takes up a tremendous amount of time and energy. Cooking and clean-up usually takes around an hour every day; my weekly house clean is between three to five hours, depending on whether I hit all the bathrooms and the bedrooms (I may skip a bathroom or bedrooms during the weeks when they’re not used or about to be used).  A deep clean of a single room can take up a whole day; decluttering a half day on its own (I’m really not looking forward to tackling my study again).  But for me any effort needs to be spaced out to avoid pain and fatigue.

When I consider the time I need for my list of writing and work projects, I don’t want to lose whole days to deep cleaning and so it gets pushed to the bottom of the to-do pile.  It is the ball that I’m regularly leaving on the ground and not even attempting to juggle.

But what I have been learning in the past month is that sometimes it is OK to not juggle everything all at once. Sometimes you have to leave a ball on the ground and focus on getting proficient with the balls you are juggling.

And it’s not the end of the world. My house is clean enough and I’m making good progress with juggling everything else.

Well.

I still need to set myself better boundaries.  It’s too easy to get caught up in watching a TV programme or reading a story when I should be getting on with writing my own story or focusing on getting a work project underway.

I feel part of the problem is that it has taken more than a few months for my health to get to a point where I feel it is good enough to fully tackle work every day.  It’s too easy some days to opt for an ‘easy’ day because I’ve committed to giving myself grace, where really I should be pushing myself to do more.  Certainly I know I am capable of getting more done.    

One of my successes this last week was doing a full risk brainstorm and plan.  I’m a big believer in risk management being the key to good project success.  Writing the risks down around getting my new business off the ground, I realised that I have an actual issue with motivation. 

Work and writing wise, I’m very much in development mode.  That means while I have a lot of activity, there isn’t a lot of feedback or sales at this point to validate that work and make me feel proud that I have achieved something.  I know myself and I know that I work best from positive feedback.  The little moments of getting likes on a story or an article I have posted are great, but they are not the major pieces underway. It’s difficult to keep motivating myself on the promise of ‘some future day I’ll get that recognition’ for what I’m doing today.

Still I think identifying the issue is half the solution.  I know what the problem is now.  I just need to find a way to motivate myself more day-to-day.  I also do want to retain that commitment to giving myself grace when my body needs it. My number one priority has to be my health.  Without it, I’m not getting anything done!

Thankfully this past week has seen good progress.  Work has progressed on schedule, and my writing has gone well this week. I’m making good progress writing my next original story in the Iolaire Bay Cases series which I’m aiming to publish on Halloween. I’ve plotted out my Big Moxie Q4 planned stories and plotted out the next Stargate Aftershocks story.

It’s a juggle but I’m doing it, and I feel like I’m improving at juggling the balls I’ve picked up, even if I have to leave the deep cleaning ball on the floor for now.