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Tuesday, May 29, 2018

Grinding Away on Gadget Copy

Hard end-of-month deadline. For a night owl like me [and the company I'm writing for is in California], that gives me till midnight Thursday.

I have 54 products left, so that means 27 each day. And every single one requires 7 to 9 columns of copy created in a spreadsheet. I first have to study the product. Most of the copy blocks are just features, such as Opens any size can or 6-inch stainless-steel blade. But each item needs a long description, several sentences of inviting marketing copy, again created in spreadsheet format--which can feel [far] trickier and confining than composing copy on a blank page.

I've been at my desk most of the day since 10 a.m., with short, planned breaks to:
  • Steam a bunch of asparagus bought at Mac's Market & Kitchen on the Cape. Drizzle two platters of it with fresh lemon juice. Leave one like that for Fig and shower the other with freshly grated Parmigiano-Reggiano.
  • Eat lunch [shrimp, avocado, steamed asparagus].
  • Have a snack [my delicious smoothie from Juice Culture that I didn't finish at breakfast].
  • Start a load of Cape Cod laundry.
  • Load and run the dishwasher.
  • Schedule hair color and brow tint [a first] for Friday. So.much.gray.
  • Water some plants outside.
  • Refill my tall cup of ice water several times.
  • Stretch out on the couch for 15 minutes to read this past weekend's "Modern Love" essay on NYtimes.com--and catch up on Roseanne's very unfortunate, very unfair, just plain ugly racist comment.
  • Talk to our sitter/friend, Elaine, when she got Punchy after school, as she does every Tuesday.
  • Talk to Figgy when she came back from campus and before she disappeared upstairs to study chemistry.
  • Check Instagram, email and blogs.
  • Have another snack [too much snacking].
  • Put frozen wild-caught, lightly breaded fish squares in toaster oven and tell Dan to steam corn on the cob to have with dinner.
  • Eat dinner.
  • Give Punchy her evening medicine [melatonin and another] with ice water.
  • Give Sug a brief walk.
  • Pay the mortgage online.
  • Sign up online to bring watermelon to Punchy's school field day on Friday.
Wow, that's a lot of breaks. I think I might have ADHD?

Sigh, takin' care of business, every day.

I have to go to bed. Our bedroom is the only room so far with an A.C. unit. I am very hot.

Good night.

TCOY
At 9:20 p.m., I drove to Whole Foods to get roasted cashews. I also got organic PB; bananas; unsweetened almond milk for Fig; veg sausages; 2 bunches local asparagus; half-pint heavy cream; almond crackers; horseradish Cheddar dip [a very snacky mistake! but tasty]; cinnamon graham crackers and little packs of Late July brand Cheddar PB sandwiches for Punchy and others; 3 bagels for others; cream cheese for bagels for others; grass-fed burgers; teriyaki beef kabobs; coffee-rubbed pork chops; energy bars with 5 ingredients; Jarlsberg and Cabot slices to top burgers; and a little round of Purple Haze lavender goat cheese from a California creamery--very expensive, an indulgence for myself. I tucked it away in the bottom crisper drawer. I think I like the name and the pretty label as much as anything else about this cheese.
The small Cypress Grove round wss pricey; $7.99.
But I'm  not buying luxe chocolate, cookies, pastries
or ice cream now.








4 comments:

  1. Wow, that’s a big job. I would separate the tasks and first write, then enter on spreadsheet - I hate spreadsheets. It’s like a math problem -So if you work 10am-11pm with 2 half hour meal breaks, that’s 12 hours, and you can write 3 items in each of the first 3 hours, then you can take 30 minutes each for the the remaining 18 items ... goodness, that’s a lot. Do you map out writing in advance, or just plow ahead? I have monthly deadlines and also a lot of other tasks which interrupt. Good luck!
    Lkz
    !

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    Replies
    1. Hi friend. How is the poison ivy? Sending healing thoughts. My client also suggested creating an word doc and cutting and pasting but to me, that just adds another step on a list of 106 gadgets. Christ. Sorry. Did I just say that? Thank you for caring and for your suggestions. On this project I am mapping ahead now that the end is near but I feel like a machine at this point. For over a month, I have been bringing gadgets to Punch's gymnastics but that is slow going and people must think I'm odd, holding up a ladle and studying it, etc. I am productive w writing articles at Starbucks but I can't with this, because it's a lot of knives, and some are quite big, and I would look suspect. xoxo

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  2. delegating work is so hard! I have ongoing piles at work: today, tomorrow, later in week. Sometimes it feels like I spend more time shuffing things from one day to the next in the to-do pile than I spend doing. The very varied, very engulfing amount of work requires diff systems than my freelance life, which was more deep dive on a few projects. I'm still developing systems. I miss the days when my work rhythms were so familiar to me that it felt organic. Challenges keep us nimble. That's what we must keep telling ourselves!

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    Replies
    1. Hi Kim. I like that, "Challenges keep us nimble." Yes, yes, positive thinking. I marvel at your skills, your mentoring, everything--at home and at work. Love Alice

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