Update on the editing project: I’m onto phase 3 – the edit of the paperback. Without going into too much detail, any changes to this document have the potential to cause mayhem in the formatting.
To give you a sense of how I normally work on this phase picture tears, rage, bewilderment, blind fury and despair.
It’s not been my friend up til now. Partly because Word has a habit of just randomly causing problems for no apparent reason!
Anyway, this time I’m noticing that I’m more relaxed in this phase than ever. When Word does something weird, I just look quizzically at it and see what I can do to fix it.
I’m putting this relaxed attitude down to 2 things:
1. This is the 3rd time I’ve done this. So although I have to refresh my memory on how to do it, I know I can do it and I will do it.
2. I’m doing Joy Challenge with Amina Makhdoom Lynch, and I think the extra joy in my days is having the effect of cushioning or dampening the stress.
At one point yesterday, I could feel myself starting to tense up when one of the Word mysteries cropped up (page numbers randomly indented…but not on all pages…wtf?), but I realised I just couldn’t be bothered to get stressed about it.
I’ll try to fix it, but I very much doubt anyone else will ever notice if I don’t.
And I realised something: Tension won’t help me get it done anyway.
Tension will make me feel bad physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually.
But it won’t help me get finished at all.
Tension won’t make me work faster – past experience shows that it actually slows me down. I get impatient and start rushing, thereby missing the answers in my haste to get it sorted.
Also the time taken out for temper tantrums and sobbing with frustration isn’t speeding the project along.
As I have to say to myself at least twenty thousand times for every project: “it’ll be done when it’s ready to be done”.
Meanwhile, my job is to just keep doing my bit to get it done. Hour by hour, day by day.
And one day it’ll be done, the Word Mysteries will be an amusing anecdote instead of a source of utter bewilderment, and I’ll forget all about it.
(Until next time, but frankly by then I hope to have found someone to outsource this job to.)
I can add tension to the mix if I really want to. But as it’s not going to help me, I’m going to try not to on this occasion, and just see what difference it makes.
I wonder if there’s something going on in your life right now that doesn’t need the tension you’re adding to it? What if you could just relax a little? I know it’s easier said than done but do what you can to let the stress and tension go…after all, it’s not helping you get it done.
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