Yesterday was pretty good. The second half of that two-part workshop went well, and I was relieved. I even had a good, solid night’s sleep to counter the useless couple of hours of dozing I’d had to settle for the night before.

Today, however… bad day. Just a really, really, bad day. In every sense of the word.

So, you know, happy thoughts would be nice. If you’ve got the time to think them. Much appreciated. Thanks.

Drumroll, please….

(Ah. The equivalent here at the Owlyblog is a Busby Berkley-type tap dance performed by tiny sugar-high owls. It’s going to be one of those days, I can tell.)

Ahem.

Owldaughter.org is now up and running.

“Up and running” means functional to the extent that I’ve been able to design and create the basic pages, link them all together, and get the image to actually show, after figuring out the correct paths and directories this morning. As time goes on, I’ll start filling in the pages. The elementary structure is there, however, and I’m terribly, terribly impressed with myself, as I didn’t know a thing about HTML a year ago today.

So, yay me! Pass me a marzipan mouse!

I spent Friday working on my CV, a harrowing experience that sent me right over the edge. Well, maybe it wasn�t the CV so much as simultaneously trying to figure out how much my time is worth, thus enabling me to quote rates to anyone who options my services. After sending out a scattering of questions to other freelance workers, I�ve eventually settled on a price for my time. I also have a �relevant experience� CV which, when I look at it again after the weekend, looks pretty good.

Since then, it has amused me no end to think while working on something, �This is worth X dollars of my time.� Did it take three hours? Then it�s worth X multiplied by 3. Was it a rush job for someone that took two hours? Then it was worth (X times 1.5) multiplied by 2.

This has really, really, helped me understand the value of my time and energy. It has also helped me understand that my volunteer work is truly a gift, and that I absolutely will not accept any further volunteer editing/communications work. On top of the freelance work I do, and the work for myself� well, it�s no wonder that I shut down every once in a while and panic. It never seems like much when I agree to do it, but breaking work and time down like this has really shown me that fitting it all in makes life into a crazy quilt.

Now that I understand that my time is worth money, I can be, well, picky about what I choose to do. Investing time in a project of my own that will pay off in the future is one thing, but pouring valuable time into other peoples� projects? They�d better be darned important to me.

A wonderful line that I just had to share:

“Unrequited love. Very nice. Just like our twelve other songs about unrequited love, now with ten percent more sorrowful ravens.”

I loved it!

The author? Oh. Emily Horner. Yes, the Emily Horner. Remember her? Send her good wishes, because she’s lost the original notebooks in which she wrote over 20,000 words of a story, a situation I have had nightmares about in the past myself. The recent past, actually, now that I think about it, although it’s been an ongoing fear since I began my first novel over ten years ago.

Every once in a while, I’m reminded of why I choose to teach.

Last night, for example, was the first of a two-part workshop. In complete contrast to the last time I led it, this group was dynamic, positive, and communicative, as opposed to the last bunch. All in all, it was a terrific evening – and we get to do it again next Thursday. Woo-hoo!

More proof that teaching can be rewarding: the students in my Monday night class secretly all got together and bought us the huge 6’x4′ whiteboard that we had been planning to invest in to replace the tiny 3’x2′ board we’ve been using in class. Now, that’s special.

The universe answers the question I asked aloud two days ago:

Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets is being released on DVD on April 11.

More thoughts on editing:

It occurs to me that if I were being paid the going rate for all the editing I’ve been doing this past week, I’d be making money.

Hmm.