Since I was little, I’ve had problem teeth.  At eight or so, my dentist deciced that my mouth was too small for all of the teeth I had, and started pulling them.  I still ended up with a canine on one side that was almost fang like, until a dentist finally filed it back at 24 or so.  What it left me with though, was a horrible tooth behind it – one that was incredibly difficult to clean, and basically, ‘set the tone’ for all of the other teeth in my mouth.  Before that one cracked and broke in half, I never had one problem with my teeth – now, they’re all falling apart.

On Friday, I threw a bit of a hissy fit.  Like my teeth, everything I had planned was falling apart, being squished and squashed and cracked and killed off due to overcrowding.  And there’s one rotten ‘tooth’ in all of that stuff – in all of the things that I do, there’s one that causes too many problems – creates too much of a drain on my time, and most of all, is setting the tone for everything else that I do.
Though, it’s probably not what you’re thinking.
As a moderator on several groups, on yahell and Facebook – I seem to spend an *inordinate* amount of time on Facebook.  But that’s not even the problem.  It’s the ‘side slide’ from moderating, into games that’s my problem.

And I know why too.  A while ago, I stopped playing games at night.  I quit my World of Warcraft guild and left, and though I’ve dabbled around with games recommended to me since, I just haven’t settled – and, my laptop, which was once the centre of both my work and play, and a great way to ensure that if I was stressed, or needed a break, that the tools were at hand, has now become predominantly work.  And I feel kinda like the peons in Warcraft now.  Basically, the rotten tooth is my motivation and it’s warping everything around it, and aching with guilt and burnout and whatever else you want to call it.  I will, however, stop the metaphor there, because I know many people (myself included) dislike dentists

Everything, bar the snatched time I spend playing games guiltily on Facebook, feels like it’s work.  Except, I noticed about a week ago, that I wasn’t snatching time to play, I was playing and snatching time to write.  I’d sit on Facebook, and respond to posts, and play Bejeweled, or Cooking Mama, or Farmville.  And I’d wonder where my day went, when I could be writing.  But even thinking that would lead to apathy.  Would lead to ‘game…wooo!’.
There’s no easy way to address this, other than to accept that this is my brain’s way of saying ‘more fun pleazthanxbai’.   And while my fiction writing is *supposed* to be fun, it’s not.  I’m enjoying editing and copywriting, but if I’m using that to fill the time at night, instead of doing it when I get up, then, there’s a problem.

So, the schedule changes again.  I work during the day – and cut myself off from Facebook and other sites.  I teach myself to blog in Word, and upload when I’m done (though, ideally, I’d like a program that lets me upload posts when I come back online, so I might look into that) and most of all, I don’t spend time on Facebook (please note, my iPad and iPhone don’t cut themselves off from Facebook – quite deliberately – it’s one of the few points of messaging a couple of friends have for me.  What I do tend to notice though is I can’t play games as easily on my phone/iPad.  Not the games I like anyway – and I do generally forget to check in on there as often as I try to on my laptop.

I’m not sure how long this is going to take – and for once, I’m not going ‘aha, plan!’.  I don’t have one.
I know I have copywriting, and editing, and three blogs to look after.  Beyond that – I haven’t decided yet, and don’t have a clue when that will change – or HOW.  I do know that I’m going to be selling *a lot* of my virtual real estate, and that’s probably going to be difficult, but ultimately, very good for me.  How I go about that is a bit of a mystery too, but I’ll work it out.

I thought I’d share some twitter hashtags I’m ‘behind’.

#tIAG – the Twitter indie Author Group - The Indie Author Group is a group on Facebook, that I’m part of.

#iahop  – for the Indie Author Blog hop!

And finally, Superwriter’s Sunday – #swsun – a bit like Follow Friday, but to show the best authors that you know.

How you should use these hashtags

Twitter hashtags are brilliant for promoting your stuff – but only if you use them right.  Use them to tag posts you think someone should see, to ‘file’ something with other, similar stuff, or, possibly most importantly of all, showing solidarity to a ’cause’ or group of people.  The last use for twitter hashtags is best expressed in #mywana - my ‘we are not alone’, set up by Kirsten Lamb.

Have fun with it!

I’m so furious about this that I’m blogging direct from my phone.

I got an email at ‘theviewfrommykindle’ and at this blog saying that if I didn’t retract the review of (book) that they would post a retaliatory one star review on *everything* I ever publish.

Extortion is wrong – but the way I look at it – if this author does this, I can send the email onto the review sites to let them know.

My advice? If an author tries to extort you, keep the emails and inform the ‘official’ organisation if they carry through.

I’ve got a bit of a problem. Dilemmas if you will.

Y’see, for the last few years I’ve been trying to get my life ‘under control’.  And by ‘control’ I mean sitting with work that I can manage easily, covers everything I like to talk about and gives back to the community.  This has been going on for a while now, I’ve been kinda talking about it since January (‘I’m feeling a bit overwhelmed right now‘) and then again in March.
and now we’ve come a full circle.  Well, kinda.

I’m thinking about amalgamating everything down onto Kaiberie.com – and then keeping one blog.  After all, what makes me most passionate and what floats my boat is everything I do anyway – coding, writing, books, fiction, indie author support, reviewing and editing.  If I did that, I’d also have time to launch my indie community project, but the problem then becomes ‘are people really gonna be interested in everything I do?’

And I think the answer is going to be yet.  People are, after all, interested in me.  Everything that makes up me are all of the fragmented sites.  I’d want to work with a couple of things that wouldn’t be on the main blog, but the majority of it is coming back to here.  And I think that works.

If I’m branding as ‘Kaiberie’ anyway, it all works   Welcome to my new world.

One of the major issues I’ve had lately is finding a balance between work and ‘play’. I don’t knit nearly enough for the stash that’s the size of the one that I have, and worse than that, right now I’m just too tired to enjoy reading on my Kindle.

Last week really highlighted now bad it was getting – I was up three times in the space of ten days either all the way overnight, or till at least 3am. Augmenting that disturbed sleep pattern was the fact that I was taking Oxynorm on a regular basis (Vicodin) because my side and stomach, all the way down into other regions were hurting badly. I stopped the painkillers about 4 days ago, and spent most of the last four days either in a daze or unable to sleep properly. Not good, basically.

But, I took the weekend off – a long weekend at that, so I could catch up on some of the stuff I’ve wanted to get on with for the last few weeks/month – and because my lovely fiancée decided to set up an extra monitor upstairs to make it easier to write and work (though, I’m writing this on my laptop still, because I still prefer this keyboard for now. Typical, huh?) and to reexamine my priorities.

I finish Uni permanently in July. My graduation ceremony is in November, which means technically, in less than three weeks time, I’m going to have 20 hours – or so – of study time back in my pot of ‘time’. Which has been bled dry these past few months, it has to be said.
But this weekend, I was entirely ‘off’. Friday was spent mostly cleaning out old short story snippets, and working through the heavy thinking that I’ve had to get done to work out ‘where next’. Saturday was a mix of the once monthly deep housecleaning I get up to because I’m ittitated by the piles of kids stuff all over the house, and seeing my younger brother, who stopped by for a visit, and Sunday was this indolent day where I caught up on reading, reorganised my tbr piles into something a bit more equitable, and sorted out the last of the cleaning ‘stuff’ I wanted to do. All of it accomplished while spending more time downstairs with the kids, knitthing and generally relaxing.
The truth of the matter is I have an amazing job as a full-time SEO copywriter with Apple Copywriting. The owner of the company gives me plenty to do and likes to shake things up for me once in a while, and while I’m certain I’m doing ok, I could be doing better, but not while I’m feeling this burnt out and irritated with the slightest wrinkle. It’s not – really – helping that I’m a full-time moderator on about 12-15 writer’s groups now (three are one week on, one week off).
So. I now have plans. My plans are still at least predicated on working with other writers for a bit, and keeping up mostly full-time copywriting work, but I have an idea, and I’m getting there, slowly. As for what they are?
Watch this space!