Princess Sparkle

Time management has always been the bane of my existence. If there is anything that I am expert at, it is wasting time. Especially when there is no time to waste. It's almost as if I crave the adrenaline that comes from waiting until the last minute to deal with things that absolutely have to be done.

I also have another truly bad habit. I don't open my mail right away. I've heard that really heinous things can happen to you if you neglect to open important pieces of mail. The problem is, the important stuff looks the same as the sales stuff, and sometimes they all get thrown in the same pile. And then time marches on. If it's money I owe, suddenly late fees and threats come. If it's something I need to take care of, deadlines pass, trouble comes of it. Years ago, I once forgot to pay a traffic ticket until the final hour. They could have suspended my license and made a criminal out of me. All because I'm forgetful and lazy and have poor organizational skills. I have accumulated so many late fees, missed so many deadlines, I can't even tell you. I once had my phone turned off because I forgot to pay a bill. I totally had the money. I totally did not intend to not pay. I just forgot. Now I have solved that problem, at least, by paying bills online. The other thing that almost happened was a complete clusterf*** when I first moved to Florida. I almost lost the financing for my new and necessary car just because I could not be bothered to follow their instructions to get a simple proof of salary to give to my credit union. So stupid. So simple. And yet I kept forgetting every single day until the final threat came.

I don't think I'm a bad person or even an irresponsible person, although I seem to prove time and time again that I am the latter at least.

Honestly, I'm like a princess who would prefer it if someone else wiser and smarter would just take care of me and everything annoying in life so that I could breeze happily through life in a princess sparkle world of writing, relaxation, and fun. Seriously. When I make it big some day, the first thing I will do is hire a personal assistant to take care of all that crap.

Most months, I do just fine as someone who plays the role of a responsible adult, but I'm always just barely hanging on by a thread, barely ahead of the game. Every month something new comes up, whether it's the IRS sending a notice about some inconsistency in my taxes (let's not even get started on how much I abhor having to deal with that) or a medical appointment I have to make or even a hair appointment. Yesterday I realized my hair was completely overgrown. Of course when I called to make an appointment, my stylist was booked for the next month. It turns out she was able to fit me in within a few days after all, but the point is, why did I wait until I just couldn't take it another second? Only the princess-sparkle in me knows.

All that stuff above is understandable. Nobody likes to pay bills or deal with appointments or make irritating phone calls. But how do you explain time management issues when it comes to things you actually enjoy doing? Why is it that I put off doing the things I enjoy most, like watching shows I like or writing. Especially writing. Writing IS hard work, but it's who I am, it's my identity. When I don't write, I am less than human, a shell of myself. And yet I will procrastinate even when it comes to doing the things I enjoy the most and I have no idea why. It could be out of fear, that I will open that page and nothing but writing that looks like a six-year-old with a lobotomy wrote it will come out. Or that I will actually finish a project and feel proud of it, and nobody else will "get it" or like it. Or that I will have to deal with the cold, hard world of publishing where very few new writers get a chance these days. And then the people in my life who know my whole world is writing will see me get rejected again and again and they will soon feel sorry for me because I am not successful at the one thing I'm supposedly best at. Or worse than that, those same people will see that I'm a poser, a phony, that I just call myself a writer, but that I don't actually have talent or success in it. Most likely, it's all of the above.

So my advice to my princess-sparkle self and to all of you who might have similar issues with time management and doing things you love is this. Day by day. One day at a time. Do what you love, love what you do. Write the book YOU want to read. Don't worry about the cold, hard publishing world and how you have to write about sparkling vampires if you want to succeed or that your main character must be a straight, white male or nobody will identify with him. Or that your story must be X length or that it must be in first person or nobody will look at it. Don't worry about any of it. Just immerse yourself in your world, love the process. Define success on your own terms, not on the terms of the publishing world, which is in a dangerous state of flux right now anyway, with the ebook and Kindle industry.

Dance to your own tune and be happy doing it. Life is short.