The Summer Shift: wobbly workflow
As we head into November and the days get shorter, I’ve been looking back on what’s been an up-and-down summer, and not just in terms of the weather.
Back in July, I wrote about a shift in what I’m working on, away from a long-term lexicography project and back to the regular freelance juggling act. The lexicography work hasn’t finished altogether, but from the start of August, I dropped down to significantly fewer hours. I had a new writing project lined up and I thought I’d managed to arrange my schedule to balance the two projects fairly evenly for the remainder of the year. So, how’s that been going?
Delays, delays, delays
The new project, writing a workbook for a new coursebook series, was due to use authoring software that I’d been told would need setting up before I got started. This was pencilled in to happen towards the end of July/beginning of August, then I was due to start work on my first unit at the end of August. The set-up, which I thought might take a couple of days, turned out to be incredibly messy and dragged on in dribs and drabs for weeks – waiting for replies to emails about problems I hit, waiting to arrange a call with an IT person and all hampered by the fact it was summer and key people were ‘on leave’.
Frustratingly, at the same time, there were changes going on in my lexicography work too which left me unable to carry on at several points as I waited for things to be implemented in-house. Those delays weren’t especially long, but just happened to coincide with the delays on the other project leaving me twiddling my thumbs and watching my income slip away. It might seem nice to have time ‘off’ right in the middle of summer, but they were the kind of delays where I was checking my email each day hoping for progress, so I couldn’t really use the time to do much else. And all round, it left me with worringly few paid hours through August.
And we’re off!
The software issues finally got resolved at the start of September and I got started on some writing just a week or so later than planned. I settled into the rhythm I’d envisaged for a couple of weeks, with roughly a third of my weekly hours on dictionary work and two-thirds on the writing project.
Because it was the first unit of a new project, there was a bit of time waiting for feedback and redrafting, then the unit had to be passed up the line for approval before I could carry on. Annoyingly, this once again coincided with a bit of a pause in my lexicography work and a few days of thumb-twiddling. Luckily, I had a talk to prep, so managed to fill the time productively, albeit unpaid.
October overload
I’d hoped to make a start on my next WB unit before I went away to the Euralex conference at the start of October, but for various reasons, it didn’t happen. That left me playing catch-up for a couple of weeks when I got back and working well over the number of hours I’d usually put in at my desk. It was only a handful of extra hours, but because it was a new project and new software, the extra focus and concentration involved really took its toll on me physically.
Finding my flow
As I’ve explained before, in order to manage a chronic pain condition, I need to work in relatively short bursts spread out through the day and through the week with plenty of breaks in-between. That’s super-easy with lexicography work that breaks down naturally into short stints. Activities for a workbook should also be fairly modular, but as this is for C1 level and each unit includes relatively long reading and listening texts, it’s easy to get caught up and spend longer stretches at my desk focused on getting a section sorted and not wanting to interrupt the flow while I’ve got everything clear in my head. The authoring software is also proving to be especially fiddly, which means greater stress and tension through my shoulders and hands manipulating the mouse to get the formatting correct.
When I talk about work taking a strain on my health, people often tell me to “be careful” and “take it easy”. I know the comments are well meant, but they’re also slightly grating because they infer that it’s somehow my fault and that I should just organize my work better so that it didn’t impact my health … which of course, is vastly easier said than done! When you’re trying to get your head around a complex new project, dealing with various inevitable stress factors (delays, miscommunication, looming deadlines) and you’re also under financial pressure, “taking it easy” isn’t always feasible.
Settling down
Thankfully, the writing project does seem to be settling down, with some of those initial teething problems sorted out. I’ve also pushed back a bit on the schedule, which has concertinaed up slightly from what I’d originally envisaged. I don’t want to extend deadlines too much because it’s a fee-based project, so if I take longer working on it, I effectively lose income, but a bit of shuffling by the odd day here and there, I think will make for a slightly easier workflow.
Deadlines on sticky notes to allow for reshuffling! |
Last week was moving towards being a slightly better balance of hours and towards the end of the week, there was a sense of feeling more on top of things. This weekend was also my first fully non-working weekend in several weeks (although I did write this blog post!). So, I’m hoping I can find a better workflow through November and December at least … before the added stress of needing to find new work from January onwards starts to kick in! It’s making me wonder how I’ve managed for the past 25 years of freelancing! A few easy years of ticking along with one project and I feel like I’ve rather lost the knack of the freelance juggle.
Labels: chronic pain, freelancing, materials writing, workflow