Here’s to a Surreal Start to Your Week

Time and space are funny things. I know this sounds like a Dr. Who quote, but stay with me.

For example, It never seems to take as long returning from a distant destination than it does getting there in the first place. Get head down in work you love and it almost seems you can accomplish superhuman feats of productivity with baffling speed. Then again, pause to check Facebook for 10 minutes and you might find you’ve frittered away an hour without realizing it. Colors and perspective inside buildings can make rooms seem far larger or smaller than they actually are.

The long daylight hours are past us now, and with the arrival of autumn (and not even the forced temporal realignment of the switch back to Standard Time) has me feeling the way fall frequently does – itching to get started on something, motivated toward better productivity and in general less inclined to dally.

Part of this could probably be attributed to the school year. Those of us with kids naturally fall back into the busier rhythms of early mornings packing lunches, homework and after-school activities. But even before I reproduced, fall was still for me the season of getting stuff done. These days, that stuff is the (blessedly) abundant amount of freelance work I have, combined with the desire to get a first draft of Novel 2 in the hands of beta readers. Interspersed among all that is planning for book festivals and sci-fi conventions, short story submissions and continuing to try to get that big story in a national magazine.

If it seems like a lot, it is, and it does occasionally kick me in the ass just as you might expect. But getting our asses kicked every so often reminds us we’re not living in a dream and things aren’t just going to work out. Getting things to work out takes focus, determination and a certain amount of insane conviction that you’re going to make things work out whether the universe likes it or not.

So my wish for you this week is that you find that surreal place where time works in your favor and space opens up to accommodate you. TARDIS not required.