Thursday, June 26, 2008

Some Days are Amazing

I read an entire book yesterday. Not just an entire book: Eileen Rendahl's Un-Bridaled, which is 322 pages long. I started it in the morning, probably around 9-ish, and finished it a little before 11:00 p.m.

That's not really amazing. I'm a fast reader. People used to get disgusted playing Jeopardy! with me on the Sega because I read the questions so much faster than the rest of them. (I know. Sega. Dates me a bit. Imagine if I admitted we had an Atari and a Colecovision when I was a teenager kid!) Lots and lots of people can read a book in a day. My daughter does it every day of the week!

But what is amazing is all the other stuff I did during the day:

  • Proofed six marketing pieces
  • Critiqued a 59-page short story
  • Did an administrative job for a client
  • Completed three loads of laundry
  • Folded and put away two loads of towels
  • Edited 2 chapters of Fight or Flight
  • Wrote 3+ pages of The Light of Redemption
  • Attended a one-hour chat at TKA
  • Took Number Two and one of her teammates to soccer practice
  • Read a 31-page contest entry and completed the score sheet
  • Various and sundry household things, like cleaning the litter box, feeding the animals, cooking and eating lunch and dinner
  • Exchanging IMs and e-mails with colleagues


I've had busier days, I'm sure you all have, and I'm not really bragging, despite my high sense of accomplishment. What really amazes me is that a day like this can happen, yet rarely does. Usually, if I spend any time in IM or not ignoring my e-mail, I get far less done. My editing and administrative work always takes priority over the writing, and tends to derail me. Even if I make use of down time like soccer practice (which I did yesterday), it's still less productivity than I would have had in the same time frame without being at practice.

So what is it? Is it that Mercury going direct freed something? Is it that I got more disciplined and focused? Is it a weird space-time thing that makes it stretch at the whim of a higher power?

Who knows? Or cares. I'm just going to aim for the same thing today. Here's my list:

  • Blog
  • Finish administrative project, phase 1
  • Take Number Two to the orthodontist and go to the library, comic book store, and grocery store
  • Edit three chapters in Fight or Flight
  • Write some new pages on The Light of Redemption
  • Judge another contest entry


And may you all have amazing days!

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I'm taking it you liked Un-Bridled (did I get that right?) I've read one of Eileen's and loved it.

Natalie J. Damschroder said...

I did like it! I saw her workshop with Eileen Cook at the New England chapter conference and bought the book there, and liked it enough to add the rest to my wish list. :)