My weekly budget (a metaphor)

I envision the time I have each week as money. I earn $168 per week. Unlike real money, however, I cannot save any surplus for the next week, nor can I borrow on credit. I can only use what I'm given and hope I budget wisely.

So, my budget is thus:

Taxes (at a preferred rate of 30% of my income): $56 
This is the amount of time I choose for sleep. This also includes any pre-bed rituals, like brushing teeth and maybe reading. Unlike real life, I can borrow from the taxes I pay to fund something else, but I end up regretting it. (Okay, maybe that is more like real life than I want to admit.)

Tithing: $12 
Being religious, I believe in giving over a certain percentage of my income to my God. I have a three-hour church block on the Sabbath. I teach Early Morning Seminary five days a week, plus lesson prep time, an hour on Monday for Family Home Evening, and time  here and there for my own scripture study, meditation, prayer and ministering service. Turns out I devote about twelve hours. If this was a true tithing analogue, I should up it to about seventeen hours a week.

Bills:  $36
Gotta pay your dues if you wanna sing the blues. These are time obligations I must fulfill:
Day Job:  $12
School:   $12
Writing:  $12
I try to balance these out. Sometimes school takes up more time, especially if I have a project due; sometimes work takes up more time if they ask me to come in more hours to help complete a project. Sometimes the Day Job feels heavier than it is, because it takes up more spoons than it should. Don't get me wrong; my day job is a perfectly good job. I work in a good environment with a great team. If IT Support is what I wanted to spent the majority of my budget on, it's one of the better jobs out there. But I don't want to do IT Support any more. My issues with dealing with other people's problems are growing. This increases my tax demand, as I burn too much energy on the Day Job.

Travel: $10
This is literal. While I put petrol in the car, I also put time into driving places. On a quiet week, not so much. If I have an occasional dash to Perth or somewhere, that can take a bit more out of my budget.

Child Support & School Fees:  $16
When one has offspring, one must care for them. Your kids need your time, more so when they're younger, but not as little as you'd think when they're older. Help with homework and practice, listening to them, spending time with them, and more are required. While much of my child support budget is spent on individual children, at least there are a few things that I can group together.

Food:  $14
One must nourish the body. One must also nourish the soul. Self-care is essential for good mental health, which then enables one to pay one's other bills.  Things like dedicated meal times, reading time,  piano practice, a nice, hot shower, exercise and other personal-care things are a bill one cannot neglect to pay.

Spousal support:  $10
Gotta support the spouse, or one finds one no longer has a spouse. While some activities (like watching a movie together) can be covered under the Food bill, other things like just listening to how their day was or helping them pull weeds in the garden is purely spousal support. Many people neglect this bill, sadly.

Chores:  $7
As much as I loathe it, chores still need to be done. Dishes, kitty litter, laundry, vacuuming, you name it. One has to keep one's environment tidy. One of these fine days I'll earn enough spendable money to afford to pay someone else to clean my house for me. (Buy my books and make this dream of mine come true.)

Now, at the end of all this, turns out I have approximately $7 left. That appears to be one hour a day. Alas, this one hour a day gets nickle-and-dimed away in the interstitial moments.  Stop to chat with someone at work after a shift, that could be a good fifty cents gone. Waiting at the train station for the daughters after school? Another twenty-five cents spent. Little by little, these few precious dollars evaporate. A minor mishap leads to the Chores bill demanding another dollar. A late child nibbles away twenty cents. Traffic slowdown takes another twenty cents. Another child needs to go shopping to buy something for school? That can take two whole dollars.

Before you know it, those seven dollars are gone, and you're wondering where the money went.

Then there are those weeks where some big event takes over your life, forcing you to borrow from or even abandon some of these bills.  My last week was like that.  A child had a massive homework project she couldn't do alone. An expected death of an uncle gave me a few hours' pause while I gave over to grieving. A planned weekend away, while welcome, meant that many hours I could have spent on other projects went somewhere else.

As you know, Bob, I completely did not blog this week, as my time needed to be focused on other things.  I'm hoping you'll forgive me for this, for I was prepping the final copies for the print version of God of the Dark and getting Bride of the Dark prepped up as well.

And then there were the times I didn't want to do anything at all, but trawl through my cousins' memories of their awesome father.  The thing with an expected death from Stage 4 Pancreatic Cancer is that one has plenty of time to come to terms with one's graduation from mortality. Also  helps to be Mormon with the belief that death is not the end, merely a pause.

Now, if only there was a way I could earn more money in a week.

Rare Opportunity Job

Yesterday was the deadline for applications for a Rare Opportunity Job. You bet your sweet bippy I submitted my application.

A Rare Opportunity Job (sometimes called a Dream Job) is the kind of job you want to be working at, but aren't, because the opportunity to get one rarely comes up.

I'd love to be a Google Doodler. I'd love to be a score composer. But these opportunities aren't going to happen any time soon, so I've let my dreams settle into more realistic aims.

A ROJ at a library recently arose. While I'm not actively job-hunting at the moment, I couldn't pass up the opportunity to apply.

I got my first library card at age 3. We attended at least once a fortnight or so. Would have gone more often, if a library was within my underage commute distance without needing to rely on someone to drive me there. As an adult I've worked at three libraries and loved it. Currently I do part-time IT Support peripherally to a library, but it's not quite the same as working in a library itself.

Last week a Rare Opportunity Job arose at a library. What makes this the ROJ it is?

• It's in a library. After having worked straight IT for a while, I realised I'm much happier working in a library. I really want to go back.
• Location. Granted, it's a good hour away. But it's close to a daughter's school, and it's in a neighbourhood I wouldn't mind working in. Besides, long-term plans involve us moving into that area anyway. 
• Money. Sure the hourly rate is lower than what I'm making now, but as it's a full-time job, the actual amount of money that will be going into my pocket will rise. I need more money, but I also need less stress. This job will give me both.
• Work Load. Unless this job ends up being an outlier, the work load pace and stress will be less than what I'm doing now. I'm ready for a job where I'm a wheel cog and not a fire extinguisher. I'm feeling the faint edge of burnout nibbling at my heels at my current job. While my hours keep that at bay, this leaves me stuck in a corner. I could make more money if I could get more hours, but then I'd definitely burn out faster.
• Schedule. I confess I was considering going back to full-time work in 2-4 years time, now that Their Ladyships are much older and don't need their momma so much. Still, there's a few things they do that require me to be Mom. The work schedule, as posted with the job application, will allow me to continue being there for them when they need me. There's also the opportunity for the eldest to come to the library after school for some quiet study time, before going home with Mom (as long as she doesn't bother me too much and lets me get on with my work).  Only downside is that I will have to work one Sunday afternoon a month, and we've got afternoon church next year. 
• One weekday RDO (see previous). This one weekday off is a boon. This will be a block of time I can use for study and writing, plus daughter support.

"Wait," you say. "Isn't being an Author your Dream Job?"

Well, yes, dear reader, it is. However, unlike a regular 9-5 Day Job, the opportunity to succeed as an author doesn't come along as a job application that you score an interview and then a job offer and then you're in until ded or fled.

Writing's one of those things where to succeed you need Luck, Persistence, Talent (pick two; or rather, two will pick you. Only in Persistence do you have a choice).  Even if you do score a success, you're only as good as that moment of success, and you're back to the struggle. 

It's going to be several years before writing income is sufficient to replace a day job's income. Until then, I engage in that longstanding tradition of Author with a Day Job. I know more AwDJs than I do authors who make sole income from writing.

Library jobs are rare enough as it is. The last library job I applied for received over 800 applications. Eight. Hundred.  The chances I'll get called for an interview, never mind get this job are rather slim.

But those odds are better than if I'd never applied at all.

________________________
Her Grace daydreams about going to her new library job and spends idle time working out the logistics.

The Best Thing to be Doing

Mitch Mitchell wants us to read more.
I'm happy to write more books so you can.

"Is this the best thing you can be doing right now?"  I often ask myself that, but not as often as I should.

A few weeks ago I was chatting with our marketing team at the Day Job about the importance of marketing. I realised I'd let my marketing slip on my books. This was half-laziness and half-analysis. I'd been monitoring the marketing I've been doing for my books, weighing costs vs returns. My current methods were not the most effective at the moment. I wasn't getting as good a ROI (return on investment) as I wanted. After a bit more analysis, I noticed what I'd been doing wrong.

The best way to market a book is to have more books out there. I've currently got five standalones plus one permafree short story sampler. In my recent research, this isn't enough.  Even when the some of my books go on sale with promo, I get some nibbles, but not sufficient to compensate for the price of marketing.  Really, one should be getting a ROI colour other than red. (I accept black or green.)

Obviously I need to get more books out, preferably in a series.

Some author/marketers recommend you spend some of every day writing and some marketing. Fair enough, if you've got the inventory. I don't think I have enough inventory.

So I've decided I'll keep doing little bits of marketing here and there, but not the full-scale I really should be doing.

Instead, I'm going to devote that extra time to finishing more novels. This is the best thing I can be doing right now.  The more novels I get out, the more effective my promotional efforts will be.

I just finished "Currently Unsupervised", which is now aging in a printout on my desk. I'm starting the research for my Victorian Clockpunk Telescope Romance and I've applied for a developmental grant for "Of The Dark".  "The Charm of Truth" needs to sit a little longer before I tack another 20K to it, then it'll be ready to go.

If you ask me if I can do something and I say NO, this is why. These novels don't write themselves.

_____________________________
Her Grace encourages you to leave reviews for her work. That's one of the best things you can do for an author.

The Curse of Time

No, I'm not talking about lack thereof. That happens to us all.

I'm talking about how we measure time, according to our planet's circadian cycle, and the fact that we've colonised all 360º of it.

Recently I've been hanging out on Twitter for pitch parties and the such. Alas, most of the fun on Twitter happens when the US is awake. That's my middle of the night.

Eastern Standard Time is diametrically opposite Western Australian Standard Time.  Also, WA does not have Daylight Savings Time, because we're smart. See, we have a greater awareness of how time zones can affect others. Perth is the only major city within our time zone. When we need to conduct business with Adelaide, Sydney, Auckland, London or New York, we've got to deal with different time zones. Daylight Savings Time, that leftover dinosaur from a time when most people did not have electric lights and the Internet, is useless in the 21st Century. Spring Forward and Fall Back does no one any favours, and causes more problems than it solves.

But I'm not here to rant about DST. It's your own bad luck if you live in a DST Zone. DST can change. It can be legislated out of existence. Really.

I'm talking about things that governments can't change: science. Planet is round. You are on one side, I am on the other. If you're a diurnal creature like me, chances are we won't be awake at the same time. This bums me out.

This affects my professional life.  As an author, I spend half my time writing and the other half marketing/networking. My ideal work day would be to get up early, get about four hours' writing time done, then spend the warm afternoon in promo and socialising.

But I can't, because most of my audience is asleep during my afternoon. If I am to be social and interact with everyone, I've got to do it first thing, before everyone goes to bed.  Scheduling tweets and blogposts doesn't do me any good, because I'm not there to interact.

This is not an ideal schedule, as I'd much rather spend my more brain-awake hours working on great novels, not marvelling at the witty sayings of social media. Going nocturnal for the sake of my career isn't an option at this point, as I still have children at home.

I see lots of authors having great networking success because of Twitter. It's a shame I can't take full advantage of its power simply because I'm on the wrong side of the planet.

__________________________
Her Grace, in spite of geographical isolation, prefers the lifestyle of Perth and Australia. She gets paid a living wage and does not need to fear that one little medical issue could send her bankrupt.

2014: a Year of Creativity

This year I have chosen to really indulge in my professional writing career and Get Stuff Done. Turns out, I've chosen a really good year to do this:

• It's a Year of 7: because of this, it is most open to analysis and research, the seeking of knowledge, scientific and inventive, a year of study and meditation. 
• It's the Year of the Horse: a year for improvement. (Hey, who can't use with getting better?)  So, high energy, brightness, intelligence and ingenious communication.  
• It's a Year of Fire:  the sign of creativity and inspiration, also of increase.  As a fire grows greater the more you feed it, so can creative pursuits grow.

Looks like I'll be getting stuff done.

______________________
Her Grace, when not figuring out what to do, is busy doing it.  She's hoping to have a more productive publishing year than last year.