Busy Season
As the first month of fall quickly came and went, we have to say, whew. September felt like a doozy. Is it because we pulled off a huge bash of an anniversary party mid-month and are still recovering from six whirwind hours of hostessing? Is it because we're nearing capacity for full-time memberships and feeling the workload that comes along with servicing nearly two hundred members? Is it because now, officially in our second year of business, desk lamps are breaking by the dozen? Or maybe it's just what happens in the fall. We all get busy. Or have we always been busy?
One question we get often is, "Do you guys have time to write?" And this question makes us squirm. Perhaps it's because we both don't feel like we can ever spend enough time writing or enough time on Paragraph. Perhaps it's because we do more Paragraph work than we'd like to admit. Or because the answer is neither yes or no, but both.
Yes, we find time to write when we're not at Paragraph. Or we do our best to make our days out of the office "writing days," and try not to put too much expectation on one another to respond to email or accomplish any Paragraph work. And also apply pressure on one another to have written on our days off. It helps that we're both writers.
No, we don't always write on our days away from Paragraph. We could both spend seven days of the week working on Paragraph. There are always more C-fold towels, toilet paper, coffee, and candy to buy in bulk. A trip to IKEA is usually in order. There are readings and events to be scheduled, planned, advertised and written up. The wireless network could always use some tweaking. There are softball pictures still on two disposable cameras to be developed, and a bulletin board to put up. There are those holes in the walls and patching and painting to do where our old bookshelves used to be. In short, there's lots of stuff hanging over your head when you own a business.
But now that the first year is behind us, we know for certain that it's up to us to make the time to write on our days away from Paragraph--shut down email, turn off the phone, block out all the distractions we make it our business of blocking out for members when we're in the office. It's up to us to make the answer to that question an easy and emphatic yes.
