As if my life wasn’t already frenetic enough, things are really going to be busier than ever the next couple of weeks. We are counting down to the opening of Arsenic and Old Lace at the Main Street Theatre in Sulphur Springs, Texas on September 29th, so I only have two weeks to finish learning my lines. And in addition to lines, I have to learn more blocking moves for this show than I ever have for any other show I’ve been in.(If you click on the link you can see pictures from one of the rehearsals.)
In addition to that, I have to start preparing for two shows at the Winnsboro Center For the Arts. One, a Reader’s Theatre production, will run the last weekend in October, and the other is our annual holiday show. It doesn’t open until the first weekend in December, but we need to be in rehearsals by the middle of October, which means I need to be ordering scripts, etc. now.
I’m also arranging an Author Showcase, to run the first weekend in November in conjunction with the Winnsboro Fine Art Market. Thankfully, there is not a lot of work involved with that, but I do need to contact a couple more authors, and prepare press releases, registration forms, and exhibit space.
On the home front, we are getting a new deck built, and work will probably start next week. That means I have to finish emptying the “step” flowerboxes that connect two sets of stairs leading up to the deck. They are filled with good, rich dirt so I don’t want to lose that when the steps are taken down. I love those flowerboxes, and in this current drought, the flowers there have been some of the very few to survive.
In the midst of all that, I have to finish editing a book for one client and get started on another right after that. I also have deadlines to prepare Open Season for electronic release in December, and I am really trying to finish writing a new book.
To get through this and not mentally explode, I will have to make lists of tasks and really focus. Sometimes my approach to a daily task list is what my husband calls “push down- pop up”. Apparently that was a common term among computer programmers to describe how you would be pushing down on one task and somethings else would pop up that needed attention. My husband says I am much to easily mislead by a pop up.
How about you? Is it easy for you to stay focused on the task at hand?
Focus on one item just to get things do….SQUIRREL!
You mean like, don’t start across the road, then stop, then run back the other way, Matt?
If the task has a high-enough priority I can stay focused through almost anything. If it doesn’t, I can flit with the best of them. The result of this is I work really well to deadline, so I often create them for myself to get things accomplished.