Tag: Accountability Check-in

Cottage Garden aspirations

Photo essay incoming.

So last year, I wanted to do something about this:

How it started

Once upon a time, this space was filled with hostas and day lilies. It wasn’t inspiring landscaping, but it worked. Over the years, it became a catch-all for a wide range of things. You can see the indent from the free-standing basketball hoop. But this space is where things got tossed—roofing debris, decking, and so on.

Then, of course, weeds and saplings began to take over. Although the hostas are fighting the good fight.

Clearing all that out was as far as I got last year. Mainly because I wasn’t sure what to do with the space.

This year, I had the inspiration of starting a pollinator/cottage garden. Because the weeds and saplings were so aggressive, I opted for the cardboard mulch method:

Cardboard Mulch phase
Planning the plant arrangement
Cottage garden planted (June)
Cottage Garden July

The hostas seem to be making a comeback. That’s bee balm between the two patches of hostas. We have a nice mix of pollinator-friendly flowers: daisies, asters, poppies, delphinium, echinacea, and lavender. They seemed to have survived the downpours and the heat dome fairly well.

The trick with the cardboard mulch method (or so I’ve read) is that you need to continue to add compost during the growing season. This is what I did yesterday, and honestly, I think the plants are happier already.

And now, since it’s been a week, it isn’t raining, it isn’t too hot outside, I’m heading back into the garden to touch some grass (and other growing things).

About last night (and early this morning)

10:00 p.m. Annual city fireworks

Pets: freaking out
Me: resigned

10:20 p.m. Fireworks end with the first drops of light rain

Pets: squabbling over who sleeps where
Me: resigned, hoping everyone at the display makes it to their cars before the storm

10:45 p.m. Nonstop thunder, lightning

Pets: freaking out
Me: resigned

12:40 a.m. Tornado sirens, iPhone zombie claxon, daughter and friends spilling through the front door in time to make the dash to the basement

Everyone: freaking out

1:00 a.m. Line of storms moves through, daughter’s friends go home, still thunder, lightning

Pets: freaking out
Me: resigned

2:00 a.m. Everyone sleeps, power goes out, then comes back on again; no one notices

6:10 a.m. The slant of morning sun wakes me (as it always does)

Pets, daughter: sound asleep
Me: resigned

I’m using my hotspot to post this. Then, I plan to head outside and take stock of any damage—it’s mostly branches, and one of my birdbaths tipped over. But the sun is shining. We have power, and that’s no small thing. I’m grateful for both.

In actual writing-related updates, writing at my new and improved desk layout is working wonders. I’ve been both drafting and editing, and I think this was exactly what I needed to do. Also? Far less shoulder pain as well. Yeah. Proper ergonomics. Who knew?

A clean sweep

So this feels bigger than quitting my job. This week, I took the plunge and bought a brand-new desktop system.

Y’all, it took me forever to decide to do this. (Okay, more like five and a half months—but it felt like forever.) I’ve needed a new system for a while now. My all-in-one PC is fine for admin and hobbies, but not for Photoshop.

Even after researching new PCs and having my son help with some of the specs, I was still undecided. It took a while (again, forever), but I finally realized why.

What I actually needed was a Mac.

Cue additional thinking here.

While I use Vellum (Mac only) to create ebook and print files, I could get along fine with a PC setup. I could always rent a Mac in Cloud and do it that way. But it isn’t exactly a streamlined process. And since I’m going all in, I might as well go all in.

So this week, I bought a Mac Studio. Y’all, it’s a beast. 64 GB of RAM. I also have a 27-inch monitor. It didn’t like talking to my Logitech keyboard at first, but it all worked out after some time and (much) swearing.

Since the heat dome means that I can’t garden this weekend (except to water), I’ve been setting up my new system and also clearing out and reorganizing my desk.

Because here’s the other thing: part of it is psychological as well. My desk still looks like the setup I had for when I was working remotely. I couldn’t write there—at all. I do my drafting at the kitchen table, and really, that’s not an ergonomic solution.

So, here’s hoping! I’m going to finish up clearing out my desk today. I have a stack of Photoshop tutorials just waiting for me. I’m excited to get started.

Wish me luck.

Make way for admin days and ducklings

This week, I tried something a little bit different. I decided to take an admin day during the week, one where I didn’t write, but used that morning focus time for writing and publishing-related tasks instead.

Usually, I’d tackle one or two of those after my writing session. But you know what? After my writing session (about 3 – 4 hours of deep work), my brain is done. I don’t want to sit at the computer and do more stuff. It’s enough to clear out my email, comment on a blog post or two, and then head outside.

So, I thought, why not try an admin day during the week, use that focus time to knock out several publishing and personal admin tasks. Not only will I get things done (that need doing), but I can bring fresh energy to the tasks.

Additionally, if I schedule the day mid-week, I can also let my subconscious do some story simmering as well.

I think this might work. At any rate, I’m going to experiment with one admin day per week this month and evaluate the results once July arrives.

In other news? Well, ducklings!

Mama duck and all her ducklings, in a pond along the park/nature trail

The wisdom of weekends

I’ve been experimenting with time management and how I want my days to look like now that I can set my own schedule.

One thing is becoming clear:

There’s wisdom in taking weekends and time off.

Back in January and February, I was writing seven days a week. I was so darn excited to have the time and head space (especially the head space) to write. Book two was simply waiting for the cognitive overload from my corporate job to clear out so I could write.

Then, I needed a break. I know this about myself. I’m what Becca Syme calls a bread machine writer. In her article Why Isn’t This Easier, she writes about bread machines (the writers, not the appliance):

Your brain is wired like a bread machine, so the easier books to work on are the ones where you’ve had more time to put all the ingredients inside the machine and let it sit for a long time. But when you become a professional writer (even if you’re not writing full-time), you don’t get to spend years thinking about a book, unless you’re GRRM. So, when you take away part of the way your brain functions creatively best, it becomes more and more difficult to complete the process.

I need time to think, both long term—hey, I’ve been musing on The Pansy Paradox and the series for a decade, y’all—and short term.

So, maybe it’s an afternoon when I head to the garden center and look at all the plants (I know, I know; I’m running out of space.) Maybe it’s a trip to Half-Price Books to restock the Little Free Library.

In any case, I’m taking a conscious look at my schedule. I’m questioning why I do things when I do them and considering whether there’s a better way for me to do what I want and need to do.

Today? The siren song of the garden center is calling my name. (Can you hear it? I can definitely hear it.) Yesterday was the Guthrie Theater and Agatha Christie’s The Mousetrap.

All in all, not a bad weekend. (And would you look at the Mississippi. We got a lot of rain last week.)

Rainy days and Sundays (never get me down)

So in the past few days, we left behind the false summer and time-traveled back to early spring. It’s rainy and cool and that’s okay because we desperately need the rain around here. Along with the heat, there were wind and fire warnings.

Bring on the rain. (And the writing: it’s a good excuse to stay inside.)

Speaking of rainy days, here’s a view of a couple from Florence:

The Ponte Vecchio is always amazing, even in the rain (and it was raining, hard).

Il Caffe del Verone is on the top floor of the Istituto degli Innocenti. This view, even in the rain. So worth it. Also, the cappuccino didn’t hurt.

Four months in: reality check

So, it’s been four months since my last day of work, which is as good a time as any for a reality check.

How’s it going?

When I first started to think about this milestone, I believed I hadn’t done enough. What was “enough”? Oh, I don’t know. How about completely drafting my series, publishing book 1 and the companion novella, not to mention reacquainting myself with Photoshop for covers and images, and …

And that was a totally unrealistic view of things. But it’s the sort of toxic productivity mindset born from: if you’re not hustling and grinding eighteen hours a day, what good are you.

What I actually did:

  • Finished the draft of book 2
  • Sketched out the content and structure of book 3
  • Contemplated another bonus novella
  • Cleaned out the bedroom closet
  • Spring cleaned
  • Planned and took a dream trip to Italy

This doesn’t include what I did this past week: I jumped back into book 1 to refine and edit based on changes from drafting book 2 and the trip to Italy. Also? Add in some bonus gardening.

Then, on Thursday, I learned that my former workplace conducted another layoff two and a half years after the one that set me on the path to burnout and had me quitting.

That previous layoff diminished the department by at least 50%. Mind you, the work did not decrease by that amount. Now? I doubt the work is going away. (Unless they plan to use GenAI, in which case, good luck with that when it starts hallucinating.)

But I wondered, would I have been caught up in the layoff this time around, like (at least) one of my friends was? Or would I’ve been retained and watched my workload quadruple?

Would those extra four months have been worth a severance package?

And I realized, no, they wouldn’t have been. Even with the current economy, which I won’t lie, is making me very nervous for various reasons. I wouldn’t have the draft of book 2. I only started making progress after I quit. I wouldn’t have the structure and content of book 3.

I wouldn’t have taken a dream trip to Italy. Or, if I had managed to, it would have been shorter and constrained by having to check work email on the regular.

I don’t know what the future holds. But in this particular instance?

No regrets.

I’m back!

Hello everyone! I. Have. Returned.

But wait! Where was I?

Well, for the last few months, my daughter has been working as an au pair in Italy. Several weeks back, I was at my desk, staring at the bleak view out the window, and wondered: Why on earth am I sitting here in Minnesota?

Good question.

So, I started researching whether I could swing a trip to Italy. Turns out that I could. I found a reasonable flight, a bed and breakfast in Pisa (a quick train ride for my daughter and near many of the places I wanted to visit). Then, I made the fateful decision to click Book Now.

And perhaps it’s a coincidence or a bit of synchronicity, but there are portions of The Pansy Paradox series that take place in Italy. I’m beginning to suspect my subconscious knew—long before I did—that I needed to walk the ground for some of those portions.

I’m hoping to write more about my time there. Not so much a travelogue, which sounds boring to read, never mind write. But the odd and unusual and fun. Things that relate to the series I’m writing. Things that made me see something in a different light.

But first, some firsts:

First photo in Europe:

Sunrise over Frankfurt, Germany as we made our descent

First photo of Pisa:

View of Pisa along the Arno River

First flower:

Pansies in a container along the Borgo Stretto in Pisa

Yes, pansies were everywhere in Pisa and Florence. I took that as a sign.

Of false springs and rabbit holes

We had a lovely week of false spring, topping out at 72 degrees or so. Now, of course, it’s 18 degrees, but at least it’s sunny today. But while it was warm, I took long walks and went out and about in that extra hour of sunshine. Lots of other people were out as well, and we all seemed very happy, tipping our faces toward the sun and letting out a long breath.

Spring in Minnesota is like that.

I also went down several research rabbit holes this week and decided to pick up with language learning again. Low-key, self-paced language learning, which I’m finding I enjoy a lot more than the classroom setting (whether in real life or online).

I decided on Italian (for reasons), and I’m using Duolingo, supplemented by a grammar book and the podcast Coffee Break Italian. It helps that I’ve already studied German, Russian, and a little French. So my brain understands things like: oh, irregular verb, or oh, that’s the plural, without much conscious thought.

Yes, this makes learning a new language easier. It’s also nice to use this part of my brain again. It’s like it’s also waking up along with spring.