A Quiet Busy Month

December is typically a hectic month. I’m often a last-minute shopper. There are celebrations—three birthdays, Christmas, and New Year’s Eve. And it’s a three-in-one business-wise: end of the month, end of the quarter, and end of the year. Yup, tons of statistics, gathering statistics, and reviewing the year. This pandemic year it was a quiet busy month.

Making

Revising If I Should Die continues. Slowly. But you know what? I’m really pleased with changes I’ve made. Rearranged the order of some scenes and it works well. A first reader said she really enjoyed the story so far. She also made some brilliant suggestions for improvements.

Eleven blog posts appeared here. (More to come)

I wrote a draft of a newsletter. Now I just need to format it and send it.

Managing

Every day I record the hours I work on a project or task. And I record word counts. 

Every week I review what I’ve accomplished and try to plan for the next week. Sometimes the plan works, other times not so much. 

My analysis of this month’s activities revealed a time period that I could use better. And while I’ve only recently changed the way I do things, I already see better productivity.

Learning how to write effective blurbs is a task I’ve set for myself. I did not spend as much time on this as I had planned.

Finally, I enjoyed attending a zoom write in with some writer friends every Wednesday except the week of Christmas. (There wasn’t one that week).

Marketing

I missed my goal because I underestimated the time it would take. Not sure why I did that since I have the records that show how long it takes. Christmas brain maybe?

Home

The beginning of the month was unseasonably warm. I took advantage of that and raked the last of the leaves out of the front yard. Well, not every one of them, but five bags full. 

A large branch fell during a day of powerful winds and broke a basement window.

Birthdays were celebrated remotely.

I put up the tree and decorated it. Got the Christmas shopping done. Wrapped gifts. Delivered gifts to family.

Took my hubby to four different in-person medical appointments. Fortunately, quarantine has been good for him. He’s enjoyed the best health he’s had in the past seven years.

And my electric clothes dryer quit drying. Took me a while to figure that one out. I kept thinking I must have forgotten to turn the thing on. Lol. But this means I’m doing some line drying inside the basement.

I saw and photographed the convergence. It’s not a great photo, but my location wasn’t great either.

Going Forward

Hopefully, going forward there will be another busy quiet month. I definitely don’t want to have another turkey of a month.

Writing, rather revising, will continue. I’ve gotten to the midpoint and, of course, have to go back to the beginning again. Hopefully, that will make revising the last half faster. (Who am I kidding here?)

Blog posts will happen. I have not decided upon the categories I’ll explore next year. If you have any suggestions for topics you’d like me to cover, speak up.

I’ll do a review of my quarter and of the year. And I’ll gather receipts and records in preparation of filing taxes.

And I’ll do my best to make a realistic list of intentions for 2021. It will overestimate what I can accomplish. As a caregiver for someone with multiple chronic illnesses, my days never go quite as planned. And that’s okay. Flexible productivity is my phrase for 2021. 

A Peaceful Productive Month

A quiet busy month is a pleasant month. Not a typical December at all, but I got a lot of intentions checked off. How was your month?