Business Musings: The Possibility of Burnout and Hairy Elephants

I admit: I debated about whether or not to write a blog at all this week. I’m so overwhelmed with so many projects that there is no surface. I actually made the analogy to Dean this week that I’m so deep underwater that if someone poured a bucket of water on top of me, I wouldn’t feel it any more than a sea creature on the ocean floor would.

Some of this goes back to my “Because…September” post. I am slowly ticking off my to-do list, but in order to get that done, I’ve had to forgo important stuff like relaxation in the evening and time with friends.

Clearly, a person can’t survive without rest, relaxation and a time off—or rather, a person can, until she burns out. I don’t plan on burning out, but I sense it hovering in the distance.

I made myself a promise this week: I would get one do-not-miss thing done per day, and I would not add to my already full to-do list. Which is actually working. I’m actually climbing out of the hole I’ve dug, but it requires a bit of a concentrated effort—and a focus I haven’t had time for. I’m making that focus now, and hoping to get ahead, but so far that’s not happening.

I have to finish revising the contracts book and putting it in order. I have a do-not-miss deadline mid-month, and so I’m still digging in that icky squicky world of contracts, which does sap my energy. Thanks to all of you who have sent even more stuff. I’ll incorporate some of it in the book.

I’m also finishing up another project, and line-editing a third. I have reading for a fourth. I’m only telling you all of this because…oh, I don’t know. Because I’m tired, I think.

It’s me thinking out loud. I’d like to write a useful blog post on some of the great stuff I’m hearing about, but I don’t have the time to research it all—at least not this week. I was at a writer’s meeting Friday night, made two pages of notes, and haven’t even taken those pages off the kitchen table where I placed them when I got home.

I think my brain is telling me something. It’s full-up, as my French publisher used to say. And I need to let it get some rest.

So this is a short blog post after all. A until-next-week post. Because the last thing I want to do is get too burned out to do the blog, and I am on the edge of it. I get a lot of value out of the blog and the interaction as well, so I don’t want to lose that by making the blog a chore.

Rather than belabor the point any more, I’m going to end here, and be back, refreshed (I hope!) next week.

Until then, enjoy your writing, and enjoy the new world of publishing that we’re all in. We all seem to have an abundance of work because of this new world, and that’s a good thing. So much better than trying to find someone (anyone!) to buy the book we labored on only to be told by some dweeble in the sales department that vampires are out and hairy elephants are in, so why not write about hairy elephants?

I’m appreciative of all of the good that’s coming our way.

I hope you are too.

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“Business Musings: The Possibility of Burnout and Hairy Elephants,” copyright © 2016 by Kristine Kathryn Rusch. Image at the top of the blog copyright © 2016 by Canstock Photo/Dazdraperma.