The Balancing Act, or, Housework is evil and must be stopped!

It’s always a balancing act: the need to be outside and the need to park my butt in my chair and write. With predictions of snow in the weekend forecast and the fall colors nearly at their peak, it’s easy to leave the writing for another day. However, the October writing goals I drafted yesterday turned out to be a pretty ambitious list. If I’m going to make any progress with them, more time needs to be spent in the chair and less time gawking over the fall foliage.

Today dawned sunny for the first time in a good week and today, both Andy and I have the day off. Andy grabbed his shotgun, I grabbed a research book and we set off for the morning and the early afternoon searching for grouse and deer trails. We found plenty of both, along with bear droppings and moose tracks. On the way home, we saw a family of three wolves alongside the road. Now there are three more grouse breasts in the Shack’s freezer and I’m holed up in the Shack’s loft, butt on the chair, thinking about editing.

Besides work and fall foliage, I determined something else is keeping me from writing: housework. A place as small as the Shack can go from clean to disgusting in about five minutes flat; it only takes one winter-clothing de-robing to have just about every passable floor surface covered with boots, socks, hats, scarves, jackets . . . . Add in washing dishes, doing laundry, and cleaning the bathroom to the general “picking up” and we’re talking an amazing amount of productive time wasted on the concept of cleanliness. So yesterday, I left the sink full of dirty dishes.

A friend gave me a little flip-book I keep on my desk entitled “You Say I’m Bitch Like It’s A Bad Thing.” Today, the book is flipped to a page that reads “A Clean House Is A Sign of A Wasted Life.” With that resolution in mind, I should be able to make time for both the writing goals and the lovely autumn weather, although the Shack’s limited dish supply and my general intolerance of clutter may quickly put the kabash on the entire scheme.

In other writing news, I sent out a general query to a regional publication yesterday, soliciting my writer wares and received a very favorable response today. The pay is negligible, any clips that ensue are certainly not. I’m glad for any writing gigs that come my way.