Work/Very-Little-Life Balance

From what I assume, this is something every writer struggles with; I sure as hell do. It’s hard enough holding a full-time job and keeping up with your mates but when you throw writing a book on top of that – let alone uni – crap gets complicated.

And that’s the predicament I’m in.

Currently, I am fiercely battling two rivals over the control of a kingdom, ahem, store. This means a minimum of ten-hour shifts and extreme CONSTANT VIGILANCE. My diet consists of inhaled coffee and whatever is within reaching distance and fits into my mouth in a single bite. I have also been given a task to complete outside of work that I have no idea how to start and my boss’s instructions are, ‘I’m not sure what I want, but I need you to do it’. Yeah… thanks.

I have a month and a half until I start uni part time, which is going to halve my free time at the very least. By then I will hopefully be running my own store, which will have my stress to the maximum already.

I have Jenna to write and edit, her query to attempt (and attempt, and attempt), and then I need to research any and all literary agents that might, on the off chance, potentially consider her story. Maybe.

I have a wedding to plan. My thirteen months has shrunk to ten and I’m freaking just a little bit. The full-steam-ahead attitude has slowly trickled away to nothing but a bunch of dreams that are scaring the procrastination out of me.

So because I don’t have enough to do I am writing this blog. I am nothing, if not a queen, of prioritizing. I just happen to place a higher importance on the things I shouldn’t.


I think I have reached a pretty significant time of change. I seriously need to work out this whole ‘time management’ thing that everyone keeps telling me about. But sticking to a plan, for me, is way too constrictive. And there’s also the whole needing time to make a plan thing that seems to defeat the purpose.

My organisational skills are lacking, my room looks like the slums of a dystopian novel, I haven’t washed my brand new car since I bought it and my eyes feel like cotton balls from severe sleep deprivation. And all this is going to get worse?

Currently I have a 2012 calendar on the door to my room so it’s staring me in the fricken face. I have set deadlines for the things I want to achieve and certain benchmarks I need to get to. I have, not so much resolutions as goals, that I’m aiming for this year but I’m one of those people that demands perfection in everything I do. I know I need to let up the reins a little and take that tight band out of my goddamn hair but it’s really friggen hard. And the days I don’t write, I feel like my brain is going to implode.

So I ask you, for the sake of my sanity, how do you do it? What techniques have you found that work/don’t work? What outside factors are you up against?

Help me. Please. Because although I like reading about fantasy characters, I’m not interested in becoming a zombie. There’s just something about the whole ‘rotting skin’ thing that doesn’t do it for me…