Oh happy brain!

[ellenmillion]

Last night, sitting at the table with a glass of wine and having a wonderful before-dinner evening with my husband, he said to me, "I had no idea how stressed out and overworked you've been until I saw how much happier you are now."

It's so true.

I would work my workday, and then work at EMG until 7 on a good night or 9 on a busy night, and spend at *least* one day every weekend, plus whatever day(s) off I could wrangle out of the day job plugging away at the never ending EMG tasks. Now, I work until 5 and I'm *done.* I can sit down with Jake for dinner, and help make it, and play cribbage with him (and get beat), and working on the house isn't eating up my only free time.

I have *free time.* Real free time, unwinding of the brain, regularly, for the first time in possibly *years.* Not that I don't have tons of things to catch up on still, but now that's my JOB, and I get to shut it off and leave it behind in the evenings, instead of having ONLY evenings to squeeze it into. Mentally, there is SUCH a difference.

I have decided that I've got to do the art or writing before the EMG admin stuff, because there really is a heap of stuff to do, and art is still too much like fun; I can't seem to make myself stop working on EMG to 'work' on it when there are so many more urgent things to do. And since I'm sort of scattered and ineffective in the mornings working on EMG anyway, I think this will work out much better. I spent another hour refining Atlantis and worked on a 'zine illustration and I did some horse anatomy work and a test inking to see how I was going to do the mosssy/seaweedy growth on the Atlantis piece, so I feel very accomplished for 9:30 in the morning. (Usually I've only sucked down some coffee, stared blankly at the screen and agonized over how much I have to do by this time... maybe answered a few emails or made a list.)

Now, to the work part of things and my evil inbox!

Comments

[jenelycam.livejournal.com]

Glad to hear that you're less stressed!!! That always helps in the creativity department!! ^_^

[mizkit.livejournal.com]

*beam* It feels like you're somehow cheating, doesn't it? :)

[pers1stence.livejournal.com]

Hooray for Ellen!!

[frigg.livejournal.com]

I do the same. If there's not loads to do with Verdante, I spend the hours from 8.00 - 11.00 on writing/art/housework before starting with the shop. Finished at 19:30 today, which isn't bad at all. When C and I first had the idea for Verdante, I was thinking it would be a 5 hour per day job...how utterly wrong I was! I can't imagine how you coped with a job besides EMG.

Are you member of the OWW?

[ellenmillion.livejournal.com]

Hm... I just noticed this comment, sorry about the timewarp delay here. What's OWW? Should I be a member?

[frigg.livejournal.com]

I had forgotten all about this comment. The OWW is a writing workshop for fantasy, horror and science-fiction. I'm not sure what genre you're writing in, but if it's any of the above; the OWW is definitely worth checking out. It has been invaluable to me in teaching me how to write and the community is professional and friendly just like Epilogue. There's a free trial period of one month and they're starting a crit marathon on the 1st-21st of April so there'll be a lot of reviewing going on there. :)

Link OWW

[asathena.livejournal.com]

:D That's so cool! I'm glad you're less stressy!