No Pies Here, Just Headaches

(© Cute Colors)

Gosh, there's lots going on around here. I have just four weeks left in my course and I am counting down the seconds. As is usual for November, my next few weeks are planned to within the last half hour. It just has to be that way for the next little bit or I'm never going to get everything done. I've been through the November Craziness three times before, this mad rush to get those last few assignments in before the end-of-year deadline. One year I even tried to do NaNoWriMo. It just doesn't work. My brain just kind of goes ~POP!~ and I collapse in a heap of withering nerves.

This course has been hovering over my head for four whole years. I started this whole thing totally on fire for the course, for novels, freelancing, short stories, all kinds of stuff. I was going to change the world with my writing! I was going to make money! I failed to realise at times that life kind of has this habit of elbowing out hobbies and extracurricular stuff. I can't even count the number of late nights, finishing up assignments like a crazy woman because I hadn't been able to sit down uninterrupted until after the kids had gone to bed. The hundreds of yellow envelopes I was always extremely thankful to see the last of as I popped them into the postbox. And now here I am, so close to the end and yet so far away, with um, lets just say 'several' assignments to finish up in around a month, and I'm alternating between, "Awesome! I'm almost finished!" and "Oh My God, Oh My God, Oh My God, how on EARTH am I going to finish all that I need to do, including running a household, being there for the kids and Hubs, preparing for a family visit smack in the middle of November AND keeping on top of things like menu planning, budgeting, Christmas and Hubs' fast-approaching photography exhibition?"

Deep breath. To be fair, 99% of my time management issues really boil down to my own inefficiencies. But having said that, I've had a fantastic time immersing myself in all of this literary stuff, and I've been thrilled and privileged to have been taught by some of my state and country's best authors. The hardest task-master of a lecturer I've had these whole four years once interviewed JFK. Now that's kind of cool :) But I just haven't had the time I imagined I would, way back in the first few months, to write on private endeavours. I've barely submitted any writing anywhere - something that will be remedied in the new year, but for now, I'm gonna be happy just to see out the next few weeks without imploding from the stress.

The first thing I did today was to compile a little booklet including re-typewritten instructions for all of the assignments I have due. Re-typing them out forced me to read ahead of the assignment I'm currently working on and gave me a much needed 'heads up' about items in the near future. Such as, I have to - gulp! - write and present a piece to a group or organisation of some type. I'm thinking a kindergarten. I'll distract them with some groovy face paint :P

Tomorrow morning I'm going to print off a few of my Daily Schedule sheets (see the Lizzie's Printables section in the left sidebar) and micro-manage my next few days, at least until I get over this initial hump. Usually my biggest problem is building momentum. Once I'm in that groove, I'm pumping out ideas faster than I can jot them down and generally all goes well. I've been known, after procrastinating for weeks on a particular assignment because I've thought it was extremely difficult or had too many steps, to slide into that well-worn groove and write the whole thing up into a neat little bundle in two hours flat. I've never been, as you can probably tell, a 'do in advance' kind of gal, LOL.

And I have so many ideas for Lizzie's Home and various other computery goodness and I just don't have the time to act on anything. I have a whole notebook full of cyber to-do lists. So if posts seem a bit scarce in the next few days, or if I'm absent from the various blog carnivals, you can assume I'm either self-medicating with chocolate or re-creating the blackboard scene in Good Will Hunting.

Or, you know, curled up in the foetal position clutching a packet of Nurofen Plus (paracetamol and ibuprofen tabs) in one hand and a blankie in the other.

Cheers,
Lizzie