Momming Monday: When The Tank Is Low

Okay, I’ve had three false starts to today’s blog. I’m supposed to be good with the wording, but today, the braining makes the nugget hurt. We had family in from across the country and it was a wonderful–if exhausting–month of high family adventure. And no one died. At least, not all the way. But as the mom, it fell to me to do most of the planning. Oh, Mr. Athena and I do share the workload, but since he had to travel for work, the balance tipped towards my side of the scales and it did put a little stress on my ability to find my Happy Place. Also, since we did three amusement parks in as many weeks (and we are not the “strolling” type of amusement park-goers, either), my Happy Place might have had a bit more to do with getting my inner ear back in balance and re-aligning my vertebrae from pretzel to as straight as I get than normal. As a result, my tank’s pretty low today.

Fortunately, I actually planned ahead this time around–by this point in the adventures of an indie writer, I’ve come to realize that everyone does get those empty-tank days, where just the fumes aren’t enough to fire all eight cylinders, and the best thing to do, barring refueling, is to make sure your trip that day goes downhill. I have a list of “no-brainers” that I keep on my desktop that allow me to feel a sense of accomplishment without having had to push my brain until it broke.

“No-Brainer” tasks are good for sick days, too. When it’s all you can do to get up and get everyone off to school before falling back into bed with a box of Sudafed and a plea for mercy from the mucus gods. If I know I’m not going to be emitting deathless prose, I can at least transcribe notes I made using my smartphone’s voice recorder. Or title all the scene index cards in my WIP. In fact, re-titling all my index cards is actually better accomplished when my mind’s not creative enough to seek out evocative or alliterative titles–it’s strictly “tell the nice officer exactly what happened, ma’am.”

No-Brainers allow you to keep moving forward, without leaving your engines in the dust. Especially if you’re the type of person for whom inertia can become a motivational downer. Keep a list of no-brainer tasks around to prevent a bad day from turning into a bad week.

My short contemporary romantic comedy, Forever Material, is about a Dating Diva who finds the right kind of Mr. Wrong. It’s on Summer Sale for $3.49 at the major retailers.