Mountain Rain

We are living in really tough times right now. Local news is grim; national news is serious; world news is scary. How do you cope?

We are all stressed in different ways. Relationships. Business. Finances. Where do you find relief?

All around us are people hurting people and people hurting themselves. Does it bother you?

What can you do about it?

What if you were incredibly concerned for someone living next door to you that has been a good neighbor but who is now seeking to destroy their life with drugs and violence against their family? Oh, you've been there? Or you've been concerned for someone you can't seem to reach, or to help?

J.O. Fraser watched a whole rural area of small communities destroying themselves and hurting each other. And he found THE answer.

Get the book, sometime soon, and find out what to do when you are feeling hopeless and powerless but really, really burdened.

Remember, it is a biography. So it won't "spell out the answer" in a top ten list, or a self-help program. It will show you the answer with an entire life of memories put together.

But my current favorite creative expressions are the stories I tell my girls whenever they request a "brand new Land of Winkin-Blinkin-Andnod story." They generally talk me into two or three new stories a week. The requests always come when they are in a strange location (like the bathroom), or when they are delaying and distracting (like at bedtime), or when I am really accomplishing some necessary task (like dishes). These are the items that don't get recorded properly.

I don't have time to tell them the first time. Though I usually remember them well enough to repeat them upon request, I definitely don't have time to hide somewhere and get them down just the way I spoke them to that enraptured audience.

So a hundred and ten short stories, novellas and mutilated fairy tales are festering away just inside my writers skin. They saw the light of day once. Now they are writhing together in a darkened room, clamoring for release and permanent recording.

Maybe I need to get tough on myself. You know, stop frittering away real opportunities. Straighten my back and get through the grueling paperwork so I can find the time to express the creative stuff. Find a useful means of keeping a recording method always at hand (even when my hands are full of toilet paper or dish soap).

Last week I spent 20 some hours looking for computerized writing tools: a multimedia publishing journal, a customer relations and project managing program, a scheduling and organizing template, a type of mind-mapping software, and a program that pulls them all together to output them for me. They all have to work on not the latest MacOS X. Oh, and they have to be free.

I was counting on the idea that if I had a better tool it would be easier to organize, generate and accomplish. Instead, I found three free tools to find new things with which to waste even more time. And, though I did find both open source and shareware programs that will do all that I desire, every one of them requires some form of payment in order to keep using them after you take the time to make them useful for you (ugh!).

Do you know what it really comes down to? I just have to be tougher on myself. I really can write on anything (blank paper, note paper, computer programs--even Word as a last resort--tape recorders, email drafts, phone messages to myself, digital camera recordings). I just need to do it, and not wimp out and waste these precious creatives simmering just below my daily routine.

My Dad introduced me to Apple's talking Moose on a little MacPlus that ran the office at his work some 20+ years ago, and I was smitten. Keyboard beats Pilot BP-s Fine point almost any day. And a single-person's wages can actually purchase nice hardware and software, and reams and reams of blank paper in all weights and colors and moods.

Now, with 5 mouths in the house and less income than even those single days, I still drool over office supplies catalogs and writing utilities that are compatible with my old computers. But, alas, I can only afford open-source, freeware and shareware type stuff. Which is why I blog, its cheaper than pinter ink on paper.

So, I've been looking for a Content Management System that would let me write, edit, design and publish easily and in just the look and feel that I want. It took 4 years, but I think I finally found the perfect "CMS" for me. Campware.org's Campsite. It is "free" -- as in, "open source." It has all the things I want in a publishing CMS. So, I spent 2 months trying to install it, run it, configure it, to no avail. I learned what "Linux Bash Shell Commands" are, spent hours trying to upload, reload, download, operwrite from a 56K connection. After about 6 weeks of foiled attempts, I ran across a little line in a forum. "Campsite does not work with cPanel."
Guess what, my web-hosting service uses cPanel.

I went right out and bought a new 5 subject theme notebook and a box of medium point black, blue and red imitation Pilot pens.

It does require careful planning. For instance, maximizing a delivery requires that we load enough product to fill enough orders so that our excessive gas bills don't exceed 12% of our sales $$ for that delivery run. The previous owners had some good advice to give us on that score, and we are applying it. So, our customers are used to a once a month visit from us, and we have our delivery routes organized in 4 week segments. Very clever!

That means, oh joy, oh surprise, that when a fifth week occurs in our scheduling, we get a vacation!

This Memorial Day weekend was such a fifth week. None of our customers needed anything after Wednesday evening. And none of them called until the following Tuesday morning. So, we had the break we needed.

I got caught up on sleep. We did some necessary car chores (shocks, struts, new tires, carburetor repair). We spent a day visiting living and dead relatives. We had our first restful Sunday in a long time. My folks hosted the Monday bar-b-q picnic.

I feel fully recovered from that hectic schedule of 10 days ago, and it all starts over tomorrow!

A bank officer from whom we are asking for monetary consideration finally returned a phone call. No, she was not aware of the fax I had sent, she had not seen the financial papers I dropped off, she did not remember that particular conversation, so could I get the information to her by tomorrow afternoon, and could I revise the business plan to reflect the changes I mentioned?

18 pages of previous work was now obsolete. All my pages of notes and analysis and day-to-day business planning had to be in final form in just 20 hours. I tried to start at 7pm. Baths, bedtimes, one-more-story hours later and 2 more hours were used up. Somehow, it all worked. I didn't get that rush of nausea and unreality that I remembered. I didn't have to snack and nibble to stay awake. I did complete 21 pages of new material in just 8 hours. By noon the next day, I was very pleased with myself, and I even delivered the printed copy on-time.

Two days later, I loaded 2300 lbs of product into the van in preparation for a two-state delivery Ted needed to make. That took me until 10:30 pm at the Donut Warehouse in Seattle. I had to stop and nap on the way home, and didn't get in until 3:30 am.

Two days later found me anxiously praying my man home from that delivery trip. He hadn't been able to call either evening he was gone to let me know all was well. But he pulled in to the parking space at 12:45, and he was asleep by 1:30.

On a regular basis, I am doing my accounting/bookkeeping work for the Hol'N One Donut Company after everyone else is asleep. Last night it took me until 2 am to finish. Tonight I was done at midnight.

Long ago, I thrived on a schedule similar to this, and pulled a 3.8 gpa half-way through a master's degree (I could have done better, if I could have managed to agree with all my professors pet opinions). Also, that long ago, I recovered in a matter of hours from that same sleep deprivation. Though I remember falling asleep while driving and taking out a few neighborhood mailboxes, there were no serious consequences to consider.

Now, my sleeplessness makes my days foggy, and my driving dangerous. Whole pots of coffee are necessary menu items. I scoff at 6 ounce cups. 32 ounces is a bare minimum for survival. I long for afternoon quiet times. Maybe my girls won't notice that Mommy is the only one really napping. It has been 7 days since that all-nighter. I still haven't slept a full 6 hours in one night. There has been no "catching up" to speak of. And I still don't know if the bank officer approved of my revision. Maybe, I should just sleep on it.

Now, I find I am a month behind on my writing. My mind is a jumble of ideas and half proofed thoughts. Moments of creativity still jump out at me, but they usually find me behind the wheel of a delivery vehicle, or dialing the number to the 13th customer on the list for today, or pouring over dozens of little expense receipts. Even my doodles are taking the form of corporate by-laws, flow-charts for accounting ledgers and database structures, planning for cash-flow shortfalls. But I am not bored.

We are the entranced owners of a food manufacturing business. The work is routine. The same deadlines, taxes, accounting, inventory control, time management and employment activities apply to us as to any other business. Except that we are the manufacturers, not the retailers. That makes for some unique sets of business knowledge and practice. Some of those topics on which I am particulary weak and ignorant.

How do you price your product? Do you really add all your costs (cost of goods, labor, overhead, delivery charges) divide by the number of units and then multiply by 2 to get the wholesale price to charge your customers? I did hear that somewhere.

How do you find time to market your products with three pre-schoolers hanging onto your pants pockets? What happens when a key piece of equipment that you re-sell is no longer available to provide to your customers? How many weeks can you go without paying your suppliers? Is there a black-market for gasoline yet?

But these aren't the things I really want to be dreaming about all night long. I want my character development outlines back. I miss scene building and crisis-resolution optioning. Where did I bury my ideas notebook? How did this section of profit-loss analysis get into the middle of my devotional outlines sketchbook? Wasn't there something little Esther did today that I wanted to capture? No, it wasn't about donuts.

I wonder if there are any suggestions out there about being a disciplined writer and a business owner at the same time. Oh, and a mother of three, and a homeschooling Mom, and a gleaning volunteer, and a budding website developer.... Someone has to have written some sort of helpful advice for me, right? Like maybe those once despised advice articles? Hmmm, should I take time to find and read one? Or should I just go write something?

Now, at 1:30 am, I can finally sit down and write, and all the ideas are gone, washed away with the suds and scum of the day. I am so tired, I can hardly review the events of the day to capture the moments of inspiration still possibly stored in my mental RAM. Somewhere in there are some great points on a research topic Ted is persuing, and a few poignant comments on the psychological strategies of Motherhood, and a set of character studies to explore from the shoulders rubbed at the memorial service, and a new plot for a book about death.

Maybe it will all come back to me tomorrow.

A while ago, when Ted and I were dreaming up how we would write our lives if given the chance, we determined that Ted would have his Hot Dog Eatery (and bakery) and I would have a bookstore/publishing company next door. Between our two shops would be a "commons" area that would be attractive to teens, business people, families, and seniors to spend time in.

So when he saw the ad for this bookstore, he immediately thought of me. It turns out, my friend, Rachel, has been there, and liked it. She wouldn't say if she would like to work there, or own it. But she says it is in a great location. It has an espresso bar, and it also markets/sells online, and is a publishing company.

Would that be a place you'd come and visit?