Slacker!

Sort of. But not really.

I generally try to avoid working weekends, and I also don't work more than about 5 hours a day on the weekdays. I'm lucky in that I have a series of clients who don't really give me deadlines, other than on a month-to-month basis, so my schedule can be as flexible or as tight as it needs to be, depending on the circumstance. While this is a boon in one sense, it's a bane on the other hand because sometimes the knowledge that you can slack off leads to extending your personal deadlines a bit further than you would if someone was breathing down your neck about submission dates.

On the flip side...I don't miss the days of being a slave to the clock back in the States. I highly enjoy the European way of doing things...or rather, the Mediterranean way of doing things. Work a few hours in the morning, take the afternoon off, and maybe put in a couple more hours in the evening, spending the rest of the time enjoying life.

I skipped writing yesterday, not necessarily to slack, however. Evy was asked (and paid) by her mom to come paint her bedroom at the other downtown apartment. What she initially thought was a simple two day project looked like it was going to take her 4 days on her own, because it was significantly more challenging than she first anticipated. So I took a couple hours off on Wednesday to help her out, and then decided to spend the entire day yesterday helping her finish off the room. It took us about 7 hours, but we got the project finished.

So while I didn't get any writing done, we made some money anyway, which means it wasn't "wasted" time. And it's actually another branch project because her mother has been suggesting that Evy perhaps do painting part-time for friends of the family and such, basically doing projects every couple of months when they come up for some extra money from time to time.

Evy is about to take a pottery class starting in September. It's a professional class that takes 3 months to complete, and it's several hundred dollars. It's worth it, though, because it's another aspect of what she's going to be doing for her hand-crafted shop, which is making custom ceramics, ranging from kitchen items to decorative pieces, and with a professional course behind her she's not just some person who picked up a piece of clay and says "look what I made!". I'm tempted to take the course as well...I guess we'll have to wait and see where we are at by September and if I really want to take that extra creative load on my shoulders when I already have so many other irons in the fire.

I like diversity. I don't like being locked into just one source of money. Especially in today's climate, where you never know if the business which made you money prior is suddenly going to drop the bottom out from underneath you, leaving you without a job and no income. Right now we have three different sources of income, and we are about to start two additional. Also, if we follow through with these two magazines we've been talking about publishing, then there will be that additional income stream as well.

And at the end of the day, if something goes tragically wrong, there's always her family's business to fall back on. They've opened three new stores this year alone and I'm pretty sure by the end of this year they will be worth more than 20 million Euro as a business, which is saying a lot. Evy doesn't want to work for the company, and I don't blame her (her mother *never* has a spare moment to enjoy the money she works so hard for), there's always that last-ditch if the carpet gets yanked out from underneath us.

In any case...while I slacked on the writing, I don't feel that bad about it, because we were off making money in another area. I've also spent some time doing additional drafting to the outline for my novel, and refining ideas for the middle section, which I will start work on again in September. We are also planning a 5-6 day holiday to the Black Sea in September, for a much-needed seaside getaway. It's nice to be able to take half a dozen vacations of the year. LIP lifestyle ftw!