Today was my last day of paid vacation. Next week will see me finish my last Monday, last Tuesday, and last Wednesday. By that time, you’ll all be totally sick of me talking about “lasts.” But until then you’ll either need to deal with it, or just go read Whatever or some other more entertaining blog.
So, what did I do? After all, so many people have been asking me what I will do when I’m a full-time writer. So, like, maybe today was a way to find out, eh? So, here’s what I did.
Morning:
I got up at about quarter till eight. Not bad.
- Two hours: Fiddled with putting a short story into audio format. I’m thinking of releasing it in a special way here soon, and I just wanted to play with it. I think it’s interesting so far, but the trials I ran are very far short of the quality I’m interested in. It was, however, pretty fun. Strange how your voice sounds, eh?
- 30 minutes: wrote a short news-release-style story for a fake baseball team I run. Worthless overall, except that it was pure fun. So, not so worthless after all, eh?
- 15 minutes: played with Twitpic. I am my father’s son, hence technology things always take me twice as long to deal with than they should.
Add a shower in there, and a bit of Twitter/Facebooking, and there you have the first part of my last vacation. By the way, if I get the audio thing going, I’ll probably do something special with members of my mailing list first, so in a craven way of growing that list … feel free to use the link above if’n you’re interested.
Lunch:
- Hour+: Took a co-worker to lunch. WAAAY too small of a thanks for everything I’ve received from her efforts, but you have to try, eh?
- 45 mins: Recycled newspapers, stopped to buy bottled water (somehow a couple bottles of wine slipped into the cart when I wasn’t looking) … and, uh, a quick side-trip to DQ for a celebratory blizzard. Enjoy life, I say. No value any other way.
This was a great full break away from the writing stuff. I spent the shopping time listening to a TedTalk podcast, and got back home in a great frame of mind to work.
Afternoon:
- Three hours: Read two-thirds of episode seven out loud (about 70 pages). 30 pages to go. Walked on treadmill. Played with cat during a 15 minute break, noted that cat seems surprised to see a human being in the house at this time of day, but is happy to have an on-demand feeder.. (Opinion: The first 70 pages of Episode seven rock now…hoping I feel the same way about the last 30).
- 20 minutes: Trip to grocery store for lettuce
Wish I would have thought about the lettuce last night when I was there picking up Lisa’s breakfast raspberries. Such is life, though. And it was a good break. As an aside, I’ve been doing a lot of productivity work at … uh … work. 90 minute spurts of focus are remarkably consistent for me.
Evening:
Texted Lisa a “honey, this is your reminder to come home note.”
- 30 minutes: made big dinner salads, and put them in the refrigerator to wait for Lisa. Plan to add Bertolli Wedding soup later.
- 30 minutes: Read Analog galleys of my short story “Survivors.” Found one copy edit change, so it was pretty clean (credit to my beloved). Looks like it will be published in the June issue, which comes out in about April, I would guess.
- Two hours: Got dinner around, listened to wife, ate dinner, cleaned up, wrote this.
So, there you have it. What I did on my last vacation. Is this what I’ll do on a “normal” work day? Ya got me.
And, oh, yeah … current step count (as of 8:50: 23.5K)