The thing about going on a trip, it’s hard to come back into the reality of your normal life after you’ve been gallivanting around some city doing whatever you’d like, including nothing at all. It’s hard to come back to reality, responsibility, get into a routine…at least for me.
When I returned from San Francisco, it took me a minute before I stopped spending money in that almost indiscriminate (though very budgeted for) way like I was still on vacation. I even went so far as to purchase an $18 smoothie from Erewhon – that smoothie wasn’t bad, but definitely not worth $18 – amongst other things.
When I returned from my Bahamas/Niagara Falls/Toronto trip I was still so caught up in vacation vibes that I booked another trip. At first I was eyeing something driving distance, like Palm Springs, or Oceanside – somewhere with a nice pool, then somehow ended up booking a trip to Seattle.
Now I’m back from Seattle and I find myself still wanting to eat sweets, fast food and not do anything. That’s when I had to remind myself that I have to reel it in. That I have to get back to work. Get back to establishing a routine.
I have to reel in how I spend my money. Reel in how I spend my time. Yesterday I took back my brown/burnt orange high-top converse. I have four more pairs left from that mini shoe spending spree that I went on before I went to Seattle, and I’m wondering if I should return some or all of those too.
As I was driving yesterday and listening to the radio, the station, KJLH, played a clip of Steve Harvey’s closing remarks from his morning show. In it he said success is going to cost you everything you’ve got, and after that a little bit more – it’s going to cost you some things you didn’t realize you had as well…or he said something like that, I’m paraphrasing.
It’s just something that I have to constantly remind myself of as I go on this book publishing journey. This is not going to be easy. I cannot half-ass it. I have to give it all that I have, and then give a little more. I kept that in the back of my mind as I started editing my novella again today. I’m going slower this time, really looking at my word choice, trying to see if these sentences make sense, trying to see if I’m descriptive enough. I want to give the editor my best work.
Today I gave it a couple hours, tomorrow I’ll give it a couple more, as in I’ll try to go longer. I’m going to shoot for the November 15th hiring date. That is by November 15th I will have finished editing my manuscript, contacted all the editors I’m interested in, and hired one…or two, because perhaps I want a different one for the proofreading than I do for the copyediting. But yeah, I need to stop spending, adopt a routine, edit and of course keep writing.
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