Maybe the real lesson here is that everything really is OK, and I just need to accept that sometimes shitty weeks happen. This doesn't undo the last two weeks, and in the long run it'll balance out.

Yes. Sometimes it rains and you can't strip the roof. I have not stuck exactly to plan in nine years. Well, I do now, because my uber-plan is set in stone: Set no plans in stone.

I'm a long-time sahm, by choice, but it is not for everyone, and except for the wealthy, it is financially difficult for everyone who tries/does it. The worst financial strain is the first year or two without that second paycheck. After that, you adjust.

The first year of Ben's life, we lived on our extended credit, because while employed, I'd been bringing home ~40% of our income. By the time he was one and a half, we were buying our first house. During that first couple of years, we both had to learn to look at "his" income as "our" income (and I had a more difficult time with that, than dh did). We also had to look at the extra money I brought in consulting, and see if it was worth the wear and tear on us as a family, and me as a me. In our case, it was not. In your case, it might be, or it might even be necessary; only you two can figure that out for sure. Scott says at this point, if we were in a place where we *had* to have more income, he'd get a second job. Knowing how much I do (and I'm no Martha Stewart), I'm inclined to think that would be easier on all of us.

Your writing, on the other hand, is a part of you, something you have to do, for you. But because those deadlines are your own, you can change them, if you find they are unworkable. If they're making you feel like a failure, they are probably unworkable.

I have not stuck exactly to plan in nine years.

They have a saying in the military:

No plan survives contact with the enemy.

Unsurprisingly, it applies to plans in all non-military applications as well.

Hee, yes Sean.

And wow, Susan, talk about Xposting. I hope that I didn't pile on. It's just...it goes so fast, and I want you to enjoy it while you've still got it. I swear to Joss, sometime next week, you'll be six days away from Annabel's 9th birthday.

Maybe the real lesson here is that everything really is OK, and I just need to accept that sometimes shitty weeks happen. This doesn't undo the last two weeks, and in the long run it'll balance out

Print it out and nail it up

Part of what a goal should be doing is pushing you to work a little harder than you would at a complete go with the flow life. So if you want to write and it feeds your soul- you'll write. But if you set a goal - of - 50 pages a month and you write 75 pages - your goal is too low . But if you set your goal to 100 pages and you write 80 - 85 pages - your goal is good. More than you do without a specfic goal.

I know that there are people ( employers ) that think you should meet or exceed all goals, but my feeling is that they are confusing goals with deadlines.

not really directed at Susan. more like my own musings on the subject. Now, I have to leave in order to make it to work on time ( deadline, not goal)

Shit. Just talked to my sister. Apparently the artery needing bypass in my mom is the "main" artery and the surgeon doesn't want to mess around. She may be scheduled for surgery tomorrow morning! If they want to wait a bit for the bronchitis to ease up, it will be Monday at the latest.

This will cause a shift in plans and I need to figure out what I need to pack for a longer than expected trip to Indiana.

Thanks, everyone for the continuing -ma. It does make me feel better to know there are people out there pulling for mom.

~MA for Cash's mom.

Part of living with an infant is admitting that you no longer control your schedule. If the child doesn't sleep, you don't sleep. If the child is sick, you don't get work done. If the child is screaming, you don't get work done. Sometimes simple events, like changing clothes or bathing, take nine times as long as you imagined possible.

Yeesh, remind me not to get one of those. (I know, I know, all worth it. But it sure sounds like a bitch.)

Susan, I have so much admiration for how you've spent a lot of time thinking about and setting out goals, and you really push yourself to advance them even when things get really tough instead of just saying it'll wait til later. But it's hard to hear you beating up on yourself so much - I think maybe in the face of those goals it's perhaps hard for you to see how much you are accomplishing. I hope you can find a place where you can appreciate what you're managing to do and keep pushing for more, without taking the bumps in the road so personally. Seriously, from my perspective, you rock like a rocking thing.

I just officially decided to cut myself some slack on my self-imposed writing deadline, which is to finish the novel by the end of August.

First off, there's a month of slack built in--I've given myself September for a first editing pass, but all I really want is to have the rough draft finished and the first three chapters super-polished by October. And the reason for that is because I know I'll be at a writers conference where I can pitch it to editors and agents then, and you really need a completed ms to do that. But they only ask you to send them a partial.

And I just realized that even if I'm two chapters from the end by conference time, it's still perfectly OK for me to pitch the book, because I know myself well enough to know that once I'm that close I will finish, and before they've had time to read my partial and request the full.

And EVEN IF everything falls apart and I'm nowhere close to being done by October, the Whidbey Island Writers Conference happens every March. I can wait till March. And then there's the big Pacific Northwest conference every July, or if I can afford the travel by then, RWA National around the same time.

IOW, it'll be OK. This doesn't have to be the year I prove I'm capable of writing fast.

beth, your goal musings are entirely in line with what I learned in business school. If you're meeting all your goals, your goals are too low. If you can't meet any of your goals, they're too high. Ideally, they should be just beyond what you would do without trying hard.

Scary stuff, Cashmere. If it makes you feel any better, about ten years ago my dad was scheduled for an angioplasty that turned into a quadruple bypass. He made it through the surgery fine and is healthier today than he was then.

eesh, remind me not to get one of those. (I know, I know, all worth it. But it sure sounds like a bitch.)

Bwahahaha! I gotta go with brenda on this one. No offense meant at all to any mothers. But it sounds all very scary. and exhausting.