Weekend Update

If you haven’t yet, go read Sean Markey’s story “Shatter Shatter” over at Brain Harvest. It’s a great little story and worth the three minutes it’ll take you to read.

The Strange Horizons fund drive continues. They’ve met their goal, thanks to John Scalzi, but contributions are always welcome. Win prizes! Support a really terrific magazine. Browse through the archives while you’re there — years and years of top-notch stories, freely available.

Sean’s been sick lately, and yesterday we ended up taking him to instacare to get a sinus infection diagnosed and treated. Poor bunny.

My to-d0 list is approaching 80 things, which is on the ridiculous side. Things have been moving slowly around here because Sean hasn’t been feeling well, but I think it’s time to get some stuff DONE. I shift to a new schedule at work next week, with every other Monday off; I’m hoping that having a whole day to myself every other week will help me plow through my backlog of tasks and be even more awesome.

Back to the salt mines!

Shimmer acquisitions for Issue 12

Over at the Shimmer blog, I’ve posted a list of the stories we’ve purchased so far for our 12th issue, coming later this year.

It’s such a great lineup! I can’t wait until this issue is released and everyone can read it.

Issue 11, the Clockwork Jungle Book, our collection of steampunk animal parables, is currently in the proofreading stage and will be off to the printers soon–expect that in early September.

And if you haven’t yet downloaded Issue 10, this would be a splendid time. Issue 10 is totally free to download, so check it out.

Get behind the mule

Had a lovely week of vacation in Florida with Sean. I spent a lot of time sleeping and playing in the ocean, and did nothing at all more demanding than hanging out with Sean’s family. They’re an enjoyable lot, so it wasn’t demanding at all.

I could have used another week off, I think. Towards the end of my vacation, I was just barely able to start to think about getting back to work — but I wasn’t ready. I needed the first week to just rest, I think; I needed more time to actually get restored and rejuvenated.

So I spent some time streamlining my list this week. I let go of a few projects, and got myself to buckle down and finish off a few others. I put more leisure and fun things to do on my list. I spent more time at yoga and less time pounding my head on the mountain of stuff I have to do.

Still grumpy, though. I still want to do everything.

Came back to a mountain of work. I’ve been chipping away at it, but it’s been a slog, and it’s made me grumpy. One of the things I realized on vacation was how radical the mismatch is between all the stuff I want to do and the available time — it’s just impossible. Partly, that was a depressing realization, that I simply can’t do everything; but it was also reassuring. The reason I’m not getting everything done isn’t that I suck (though, sure, there are some areas I could improve in); it’s that it’s impossible.

Now what?

I’ve got this shiny new web site — now what?

Well, I’m not sure; let’s find out together, shall we? I had a blog at blogger, but never quite found my public voice, or a compelling focus for the blog. Maybe now that I’m in a space that’s unequivocably mine, I’ll feel freer to find it. I hope so; I think the best blogs are the ones that have a distinctive personality that shines through the words, for better or for worse.

One thing that’s on my mind a lot these days is my slow process of getting my shit together. I’d like to share what I’ve figured out so far, in hopes that it will be useful to others, and in hopes of getting advice and inspiration and insights from comments. I doubt I’ll ever be in a position to do “Ten Tips to Supercharge Your Productivity” or other helpy posts, but I certainly can say: here’s what I’m trying, here’s what’s worked so far, and listen to what other people have to say.

Shimmer’s on my mind. Writing’s on my mind. My life is on my mind.

And I’m going to tell you what it looks like from here. That’s the best I can do.

Welcome

Hi! Thanks for stopping by.

I’m Beth Wodzinski. I’m a writer. I publish and edit Shimmer magazine. I live in Salt Lake City with Sean Markey and too many cats and a dog. I work as a software quality analyst for the federal government.

It’s a good life.

Time to get my own domain, I thought, so I spent a cheerful July 4th weekend getting things set up. It wasn’t nearly as difficult as I thought it might be, though there’s still a lot of work to do. I hope you’ll stick around and see what develops here.