Like too little butter over too much bread

I'll be the first to admit that I like to stay busy. It's not a condition I use to embrace in my early twenties, back when everything could wait until tomorrow and I'd actually get around to it in a week or two after I said I would get it done. But things change, you get older, you settle down, raise a family, and all that extra time you use to have just isn't there any more, and you can't put things off until tomorrow or the next week, you have to get to them now, and if you don't it's going to completely screw up what you have to get done tomorrow, and the next day, and the day after that.

Blah blah blah.

So I stay busy, I keep myself on task and set daily goals for myself.

Yeah, I'm one of those tools who writes lists of what to do the next day right before I log off the computer, and I e-mail myself that list to my work address. I also keep a physical list of shit that just has to get done at the job and add on to it from the list I e-mailed to myself the night before. The list is usual a combination work/writing/everyday life stuff. 

Yeah, I know, it even sounds a little on the obsessive side to me, and I'm the guy doing this to himself every day.

Here's been the problem with the lists lately.

I've been losing track.

I've been veering off course, way off course, and it's been happening for months now.

Here's the deal.

For the most part I'm a pretty laid back guy. I'm a go with the flow type. Personally, I think it's the only way you can live day to day without pulling your hair out or putting yourself into early grave. But, just like every one these days, the economy has me pretty on edge. Don't get me wrong, I've got a good job, the wife and I are also down right cheap when it comes to our personal finances, and we're not one of those families who live beyond our needs, but still, shit happens. Stuff that is way beyond your control suddenly makes the world a far more uncomfortable place to live in. 

So what's been happening when I pull myself out of bed every day at 4:30 in the morning is I start to feel the weight of the day to come and I grow anxious. It's not "Oh my F@*KING God the world is coming to an end!" kind of anxiety, it's just, well, a weight. It's the hope for the best but prepare for the worst kind of thing, which just isn't me at all. 

That's the wife.

The problem with this attitude I'm taking on is that it's causing me to lose my precious focus.

But like most things, I'm just trying to go with the flow and hoping everything will work out for the best.

Here's the other problem with this attitude I've been adopting, it's effecting the over all writing life. The more anxious I become, the less I've been producing.

This is bad because:

A) Writing is my escape, my way of drawing myself away from my day to day shit, and this less writing I do, the greater the time I have to focus on the negative.

B) I really do not have time for my writing life to slow down right now due to deadlines.

Yeah, deadlines.

Over the past couple or few months, my stories have been gaining me a wee bit of attention, and this attention has garnered me a few different invites to write for print anthologies that will be coming out in 2010. These anthologies are being edited by people I greatly resepct and who I do not want to let  down. Don't get me wrong, the stories are going well, and I'm more or less on target, but I'm putting more and more preasure on myself to get these stories done on time or way before they're due. But you know how it is, sometimes puttting too much preasure on yourself makes you freeze up and end up in a situation like I was in the past couple of months when my productivity level ground to a halt.

But whatever. Some nights are going to have to be like tonight when I take a mental deep breath and forget about everything else except the machine in front of me and get lost for a few hours in my Crooked little world.

Speaking of Crooked  I have a new story up over at Crooked web-zine. The story is a P.I. story of sorts, or anti- P.I. story, or a story written by a guy who really isn't a huge fan of P.I. stories. Anyway, I'm appearing along side Patti Abbott and Clair Dickson two young ladies who I have nothing but respect for, and whose stories I absolutely love. If you don't know who Patti is, well, just type her name into Google and you'll find a million or so entries of all the stories she's published. And Clair writes about one of the few P.I.'s I actually like (Along with Ken Bruen's Jack Taylor and Dave White's Jackson Donne) Bo Fexler. This is issue #2 of Crooked and I hope it continues for a long time to come. Please check it out.