It’s been a crazy couple of months. I don’t remember the last Saturday when I wasn’t working, on the road, or completely under my GBS symptoms. But today, I decided to take it easy. I needed a down day after so much craziness. Note that a down day still included a trip to the bank, fixing a plugged sink drain, watering the plants, 3 loads of laundry, doing the taxes, buying tickets to a baseball game and sending some overdue emails. All stuff that should have been done a while ago.

So what’s been keeping me busy? Well, work mainly. My last contract had a maximum of 40 hours per week. This contract has no such clause. It’s work until the work is done, and the last two weeks have seen my time sheet hit 55 hours—an unthinkable number just a year ago. Even two months ago, 55 was  something I didn’t want to do… and to be honest, I still don’t want to do it now. I’m not 25 anymore. But every once in a while, it’s what you need to do for the job. All I can say is that I’m so glad I get paid by the hour. I think I worked at least a little bit every day for the last 26 days. Crazy.

But scrunched into all that, were some other, really important things. Recently my son tested for his Advanced White Belt in Tae-Kwon-Do. Six months ago, when he started, he’d often become frustrated by not knowing how to do the moves required, and would come off the floor crying (he was 6 after all, that wasn’t unexpected). But the last class before testing for his belt, he was instructing the newest kids in the class on what to do. The confidence gained through his classes has been astounding, and we’re so proud of him. Here’s Reece getting ready to kick some butt. And yes, he usually is the smallest kid in the class.

On the writing front, I’ve not been writing much, again, mainly because of my work schedule. I’m due to get another round of edits from my editor next week. I spent the first weekend of February doing edits, and now it’s time to turn it around again. I never imagined when I started the writing thing that so many editing passes would be needed to get something published. But I think we’re getting closer. I’m hoping the edits this time around aren’t too major, but I’m planning on hunkering down next weekend to get them done.

When I do have time to relax (we’re talking less than an hour every evening), I’ve been working my way through a few television shows. I finished seasons 5,6 and 7 of Dexter, and yesterday finished season 5 of Breaking Bad. I can finally read the internet again, and not worry about seeing a Breaking Bad finale spoiler. I’m also finishing up season 3 of Game of Thrones. This show actually took me a while to get into. Now, I love it.

My commute back and forth to work has been about as bad as I expected it to be. 50 minutes on the way in (provided I leave before 5:25 AM), and anywhere from an hour (if I leave by 3 PM) to almost two hours if I leave anytime after 3:30 PM. I do get to work from home on days I don’t have meetings scheduled, and that helps. But what really helps is listening to PodCasts like NPR’s Planet Money and Chris Hardwick’s http://www.nerdist.com/. There have been a few times I actually wished my commute was a bit longer so I could hear just a little more that day.

On the health side of things, it’s been up and down for the last month or so. I had bad migraines for about ten days (probably caused by stress and fatigue), and as soon as they were gone, I picked up the cold everyone at work has. I’m in the midst of that now, hopefully nearing the end of it. From the GBS perspective, it hasn’t been bad, but I seem to recall that when my body is fighting something, the symptoms are, oddly enough, never as bad as normal. So we’ll see what happens in a week or so.

So that’s about it for now. I’d love to say I’ll going to get back to blogging more, but that’s probably not going to be the case anytime soon. Work is going to continue to be ridiculously busy for a while, and soon my son’s baseball season will start, and we’ll be doing something 3 or 4 nights a week. Blogging takes a back seat to that.

But I am thinking more about writing again. My brain is trying to figure out what world it wants to immerse itself into, and I’m already looking forward to the PNWA conference in July. Being creative isn’t something I can completely turn off. I’m glad that’s the case.