Storytime with Rachel F Hundred

I am a tortoise. But that is OK.

It feels bizarre that it was only two weeks ago that I was writing about problems with my muse. I am happy to report that I am making progress once more with my writing. Indeed, I have started making better progress on balancing all my various different commitments over the past two weeks.

My primary contract work remains busy. I’m in the depths of pulling together a business case and progressing high-level design with the leadership team, all the while progressing projects running alongside the strategic work. It is work which I am very used to doing, and while the hours are not very onerous, they are intense and so exhausting. But I am relearning how to pace myself through that work in a much better way than I was able to do through August and September.

My own business is also entering a busy period as I have the final three training sessions lined up for a charity over the next month and a half, and I start to deliver the coaching part of the contract. Luckily though that will be the only coaching contract I have after the end of October. I have realised that trying to deliver on a primary contract and other client contracts at the same time is a stressful juggling act.

If I get extended again post December, I will not take on a full time primary contract and a secondary training/coaching contract of this magnitude again. Instead I will focus on the writing side of the business again in the new year – articles, books, online training courses. Of course, if I don’t get extended, then the plan will be to do that and find myself more training/coaching clients. I may hold off on trying to find another full time primary contract.

But I am making progress balancing things. I even managed to make it to a lecture at the local business school this week. It was great to get out and about and networking again. It made me start to reach out to book a few personal events into the diary too. I now have some meet-ups with friends booked in over the next couple of months.

Which brings me to the writing side of my life.

I came across a magazine wanting poetry submissions and was inspired this week to focus on writing something for that. The submission date is this week and as they allow for more than one poem to be submitted, I may submit two of the three I’ve written and see if any of them get taken up. There is a small sum of money for any published which will be welcome.

I got stuck on the epilogue of the Big Moxie Q3 fic which I failed to get submitted for the challenge deadline, but I have renewed inspiration now and busily writing that. I am hoping – fingers crossed – to get that published in the coming week. I am also revising my writing plan for the end of the year to be more flexible and give me the opportunity to go with my muse now that it has made a return. There are a few incomplete projects which are clamouring to be finished.

I am excited to tackle them and finally feel like I’m making the choices in how I am balancing my life to make my plan achievable.

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