Dear Internet,

It’s the night of April 6 and the stove is on, I’m sweating my proverbial tits off in a velour tracksuit, and it’s snowing outside. My tea has gone cold, and the pug is snoring.

We’re back home from vacation and along with it came vacation crud. Mr. Lisa doesn’t seem to be afflicted but I’ve been mainlining the ‘Quils for nearly a week. Also, getting home on the day of our arrival was an EVENT. We’re talking we had to go 2 hours NE (thanks to a ride from Kristin) to get a car because all of the rental cars in the tri-county area were booked out for spring break and it would have been literal days for us to get a car. From the time we left Munich until I slide that sweet key in the front door, we traveled for nearly 36 hours. Like I said, an EVENT.

And why did we need to get a rental car? Mr. Lisa hit a deer the week before we left on vacation and the impact totaled the car. It is significantly cheaper to fix it rather than total it and get a new one so we’re out of a car for about a month while Mortimer is in the shop.

(Right now I’m about to throw this laptop across the room. I’m running Linux on it and the track pad is so sensitive, it’s like a Mormon edging his partner.)

While on vacation, I thought about boundaries a lot. Well, whom am I kidding? I’ve been thinking about boundaries since we turned the page onto 2026.

I’ve been doing a lot of reading on such things and I’ve been working hard to put boundaries into place. NGI’s email had an autoresponder letting people know I was going to be OOO until April 6. I stepped back from a few projects about a month before we left and looking at my schedule for the next few months, the boundaries need to be drawn again.

I got into the habit sometime back on creating a running To Do list as well as writing down what I did for the day. I’m a very visual person with poor memory so having everything in front of me really keeps me organized. The Friday after we got home, I drew up my To Do list for the following week and it just kept growing. Coupled that I’ve booked appointments this week and I head back to the library plus a few engagements thrown in, I’m overwhelmed and I haven’t even done anything yet!

I know there is some jackass out there who will say something along the lines of, “well, you don’t have to do it” and you would be wrong. I need to reschedule the dog’s grooming, I need to see the cardiologist, I need to attend this business boot camp. These are things I’ve committed to.

So, tonight I’m looking at the To Do list for the week and my accountability for the day and there is not a single writing thing on there. I read through back pages and the same. I’m either working, taking a class, or doing something but not writing. Even on the two weekly sprints I run, I use that time for business writing and not personal writing. Sure, it’s still writing but it’s not the reason why I set up these sprints!

One way I carved time for myself was by watching less TV, spending less time on the laptop, and just simply reading. Instead of reading before bed and then I’m up to all shapes of dawn, I leave my desk between 17:00 and 18:00 and read for a few hours if I don’t have any engagements. Sometimes if Mr. Lisa goes to bed early, I’ll read downstairs before heading up stairs to read to all shapes of dawn. My goal for 2026 was to read 125 books. I’m at 53 and at the clip I’m going, I may actually close in at 150. Thank you libraries and ARCs!

So, where am I going with this ramble?

Every year for the entirety of my adult life, I say, “This year I’m going to finish my novel.” Lather, rinse, and repeat. Reading over the writing plan review I wrote for 2024 was near duplicated for the review of 2025. I was procrastinating. Lost track of time. Spent more time on writing gibberish at other places than working on said novel. I’m distracted too easily. And if I am feeling a bit candid, I read more than I write.

Here’s the other thing: I’ve got three solid projects I want to do this year:

• Finish one of my fucking novels

• Start a serial Patreon

• Write smut for Dipsea and Quinn (they pay!)

And see reasons above on why I haven’t done shit.

And frankly, I’m just tired of not doing shit.

So, how am I going to fix this?

• Pull back from writing AMUN and Ms Scarlet Writes a Newsletter until July and reassess

• Pull back from volunteering for all the places

• Dedicate actual fucking time to do writing work

• Find a place to do the writing work that is not my office

• Pull back from general social media (IG, FB, Bluesky, TT) unless for NGI or Excessively Diverting reasons

The last one is crucial. My brain associates my office as my work place and when I’m sitting up there, that’s all I want to do is work or stress about work. Even my beloved Mac laptop is work associated and if I didn’t have this Windows/Linux dual boot laptop, I’d be fucked.

(And it does not help that I live in an area where coffee shops and things close down early and I’m 25 minutes from the closest coffee shop in the Big City. I’ll figure out something.)

What will you be missing while I’m gone until July 12?

• I’m having a heart ablation on April 22 to control of my SVT episodes (95% effective; less than 1% of dying/heart attack/stroke)

• Mr. Lisa and I will celebrate our 3rd/16th wedding anniversary on May 4th (be with you)

• I turn 54 in June

• The spring solstice will have arrived

• A bunch of holidays will have passed

• Hopefully, it will have stopped snowing in N. Michigan

So that’s the plan! Pull back from as much as I can and channel that energy into my writing projects. I am not a failure. I’m just highly overwhelmed, disorganized, and chock full of psych meds.

lisa x