Sanity Check

I had to give myself a sanity check scolding yesterday. I finished going through my editor's suggestions on the manuscript in a much shorter time than I had allocated for my writing time of the day, and then I started fretting about meeting my goal for the week. I need to let the manuscript rest before I take another pass at it because I'd like to be able to forget what in the current version is the editor's suggestion and what I wrote, so I can polish it without bias. That generally means putting it aside until next week, since the deadline isn't that tight. But I hadn't put in my time! And I'm going to be out Friday, so I was supposed to be working more each day! Did I need to find something else to work on?

And then I realized how silly I was being. One of the things I hated about the day job was that I was stuck at the office even if I was really efficient and finished my work. Why was I doing that to myself? This whole goal/quota system is in place for times when I'm not on a deadline and don't feel pressured to work, or when I do have a deadline but it's so far off that it doesn't feel like a deadline. It's for overcoming procrastination and the don't wannas. It's not for adding stress when I'm being good and am ahead of schedule. The whole benefit of working for myself is that I can treat these things with common sense. So, I'll take care of some business stuff this morning and then let myself play this afternoon, and I won't worry about being out for the choir workshop tomorrow. The idea of giving myself "vacation" days is to make myself take the occasional day when I don't even try to work (or feel like I should be working), to step away for a while.

I don't really have any funny choir stories from last night. There was an even number of boys and girls, and one of the boys started making crude noises and jokes (as boys do), which the other boys then picked up on because they thought it was hilarious. I think it was easier when I just had a room full of girls who wanted to dance instead of doing anything else. Then there was the kid who came into the room singing that song about what the fox says (I know of it, but have avoided actually being exposed to the song itself). And there was the one I had to stop from head-butting me and everyone else (the way he was doing it, I was terrified he'd break his neck or do some sort of spinal damage). Somehow I doubt the choir workshop will be of much help in dealing with that sort of thing, but maybe I'll learn some new activity ideas to keep them distracted.