The Reason I May Be Boring You to Tears

It's February 1, 2010.

Let the games begin.

In this case, by "games," what I actually mean is "the insane amount of work I do between January 15 and March 15 of each year."

I am a freelance editor/writer and graphic designer, in addition to helping my husband run his -- our -- garden design company. Every year, we participate in a tour of local native plant gardens; the tour takes place the first Sunday in May. We are extraordinarily busy during February, March, and April, preparing 3-5 gardens for the tour, ours included.

With my graphic design hat on, each year I produce the booklet that every registrant of the tour receives. It's usually around 100 pages, contains tons of useful native plant information, and features a garden description page for each of the 50 or so gardens on the tour. I love this project: it is both my biggest and my most enjoyable paying gig of the year. It's also the most work, and right now is crunch time. It's due at the printer sometime around March 10th or so...so by March 15th, I will have put this baby to bed.

These two Herculean efforts -- the tour booklet as well as the garden prepartions -- join the juggling act already in progress that constitutes my life as a wife, mom, freelancer, small-business owner, and last, but God help me not least, person.

Guess what is suffering the most? My beloved writing outlet: this blog. I have few brain cells left to respond to my favorite NPR stories, relate hilarious kid-anecdotes, muse on parenting, or try my hand at something resembling real writing.

I hope you stick with me for the next month and a half.

A blog I read and enjoy has a link on the left hand side that reads: "Regular writing; occasional brilliance." I like this. I need to work on the regular part. This may not be the month to devote myself to that effort, but it's where I hope to be when the dust settles and I just have the usual too much to do instead of the certifiably insane too much to do.

So for the next month and change, I will try to keep up, with both reading blogs I like (and commenting) and writing for my own. But if I seem to have disappeard, or if I'm here but boring, remember that I will try to return when the games come to a close.

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